The Urban and rural planning discipline of Northeast Forestry University uses its geographical advantage of being a high-level university in a cold region, adheres to the principles of discipline construction, which are "optimize the structure, highlight the characteristics, encourage cross-coordinated development." With the advantages of the teaching staff in comprehensive fields of landscape architecture, architecture, transportation and civil engineering, this discipline has been rooted in the northeast and developed for the whole country, it enjoys first-class discipline status in our province , and strives to cultivate a highly-comprehensive quality and highly-innovative talents who can become  composite-type, high level planning professionals.

There have been 155 students enrolled in the discipline since 2004. The subject of urban and rural planning now has 12 planning faculty, including 3 associate professors, 9 lecturers, 2 doctoral students, 10 holding master's degrees, and 5 Master's students, and 5 national registered urban planners. It is a double division type discipline and its development is based on the establishment of the urban planning professional in 2001. This discipline construction focuses on the training of multi-level and composite professional talents for undergraduate and master’s degrees. At the undergraduate level, the goal of the training plan is to cultivate students mastering the theory of urban and rural planning and related basic knowledge, cultivate students' team consciousness and social responsibility, and have a good sense of innovation and professional ability. The master’s degree level is aimed at cultivating comprehensive theoretical and practical professionals who are tracking the academic frontier, familiar with urban and rural planning development, master basic theory and technical knowledge, and have practical engineering ability and a comprehensive ability in scientific research and teaching.

The urban and rural planning subject, based on the northern cold area, has the regional characteristics: taking the education and scientific research and comprehensive development as the prerequisite; looking for breakthroughs in planning for cold areas; being stable as a first-class discipline; and gradually expanding the field, constantly looking for new growth points of the subject.

The following are the main research directions:

Regional development and planning in cold regions: Specific research to revitalize the development of the northeast China and planning strategy, the development of resource based cities, the Harbin-Changchun megalopolis, Harbin National New District, beautiful urban and rural planning, urbanization theory and model, policy and development strategy, etc.

Urban planning and design in cold region: A Study on the development and construction of urban and rural residential environment in the cold region of North china. Research on planning of small towns in Heilongjiang Province, formed a research direction in cold cities, forests, state farms, and resource type city planning. Construction oriented, focused on the cold area of urban and rural development model and planning method, planning and practice of ecological environment construction and reconstruction.

Urban Design: A Study on the theory and method of Urban physical environment design in different scales, focusing on the intersection and penetration of related disciplines, from the perspective of climate and human behavior, and shape the urban environment space with the characteristics of the north. It focuses on the features of the city, ecological city, urban renewal, waterfront environment, to explore design patterns, various control and guide method of the winter city public space. For multi-level urban design, development and management, it has the theoretical and practical significance to study the implementation and management of urban design.

Conservation and renewal of urban historic districts: Research on the concept, development process and main theory of urban historical and cultural protection at home and abroad, focusing on the development process of the protection and development of historical and cultural cities in china. We should focus on the protection content and methods on historical and cultural cities and historical site, the establishment of a comprehensive system of knowledge protection, as well as the main compilation points and examination and approval procedures of the historical and cultural city protection planning and preparation. The method of investigating and researching characteristics of a city of historical and cultural heritage, the analysis and evaluation of the system and the legal system, planning and design method of the protection and utilization of historical and cultural protection, the relationship between landscape protection and tourism development.

Urban and rural planning disciplines aim to “establish the characteristics of the cold regional characteristics, combined with the leading edge of the subject, the construction of multiple open systems” as the main line to form a special training course system. Training the students’ development and innovation, paying attention to the cultivation of knowledge, ability and quality, strengthening the training of teacher’s responsibility and the system construction as the main focus, highlighting quality consciousness, the establishment of training quality related subjects, and training process with quality supervision and a guarantee system. The advantage of teaching resources and related disciplines is to encourage students towards interdisciplinary elective courses, highlighting the characteristics of diversity, strengthening the cultivation of students’ scientific research and design ability, paying attention to how training links to a practical design ability, establishing the training system of scientific and reasonable teaching. We also work to strengthen the construction of basic teaching facilities, increase operating funds, to further strengthen the teaching quality; actively carry out scientific research and technology research center of social services, to provide students with opportunities to participate in training, developing students' scientific research and social practice ability. The discipline of urban and rural planning has established a diversified training platform, research center, and enterprise practice base. It is continuing to strive to form a diversified teaching mode which includes “mentor + discipline group", "classroom teaching + Research Center", "Research Center + practice base”.

The Urban and rural planning discipline adheres to the new urbanization, “The Belt and Road,” and revitalizes the northeast national strategies as a guide, around the central task of the construction of an ecological city, clean city, and beautiful urban and rural areas, carrying out the “new normal, new planning, new education” activities. The main research direction for regional characteristics and realistic problems are the transformation of the old industrial bases in the northeast, the depletion of resources, open borders, and relatively backward economic development. It combines with the construction of ecological civilization, beautiful Chinese and industry development planning, trying to explore the regional environment planning theory and practice which is suitable for the conditions in the province.