The master planning course, a core course of the urban and rural planning major, is facing pressures derived from the professional transition to national territorial planning. Properly understanding the transition and formulating appropriate curriculum reform strategies are key challenges for organizing the course. With a diachronic narrative method, a review of the content of master planning and the development of the curriculum reveals that while adhering to the core of spatial resource allocation, the course evolves with national advance in society, economy and urban-rural construction industry. This evolution shows a trend of incorporating new disciplines, focusing on solving new issues, and establishing new paradigms. Hence, the ongoing teaching reform needs to deeply acknowledge that the new-round transition has historical commonality and logical consistency with previous multiple transitions. It is essential to make the curriculum content adapt to current reality and guide the future. Namely, the course reform should adhere to the traditional content of master planning, implement the value orientation of ecological civilization and bottom-line constraints, place priorities on natural resources and land preservation, and make the final teaching outcomes and planning solutions transferable to feasible actions. In addition, it is necessary to appropriately understand the impacts on course contents, knowledge, and technique accumulation derived from the professional transition. Response strategies include adjusting the curriculum program to fully adapt to the professional transformation, strengthening the training on key technologies and lowering the requirements of secondary content. With the above knowledge, the master planning course at Harbin Institute of Technology （Shenzhen） has established the principles of supporting development and being oriented towards implementation in terms of curriculum tasks, explored methods for selecting comprehensive elements and small and medium-sized bases, and summarized teaching organization approaches such as open processes and closed-loop competency development.