The Department of Urban and Regional Planning at BUET is primarily concerned with the human settlement development planning at the urban, rural, regional and local levels. The activities of the Department focus on physical, social, environmental, economic and political aspects of human settlements and specializes on the subjects like Urban Planning, Rural Planning, Regional Planning, Transportation Planning, Housing, Environmental Planning, Development Planning, etc. The expertise of the faculties and benefits of the infrastructure and facilities are ought to solve problems and to provide up-to-date technological knowledge to various organizations of the country. In addition to its own research programs, the Department undertakes research programs sponsored by various government and non-government organizations.

History
The Department of Urban and Regional Planning (URP) of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka was established in 1962 under the Faculty of Architecture and Planning to foster education and research for Master's Degree students. Since then the URP Department has been producing skilled and people oriented planners to meet the demands of the country. To provide core knowledge in this discipline and in-depth research in URP, the Bachelor's (BURP) and Ph.D. programs were introduced in 1996 thus serving Governmental and Non-Governmental organizations as well as Universities and research institutes.