What the programme entails
Webinar on Strategic Urban Planning & Policies
Learn more about the master track content directly from Dr Anitra Baliga and Dr Pamela Duran Diaz — the programme coordinators themselves! Watch this video to discover more about the importance of urban planning and stakeholder engagement in today's cities and much more.
This master track delves deeper into how urban planning and policies respond to urban dynamics and how different stakeholders are engaged in the co-creation of a commonly envisioned urban development.
The Strategic Urban Planning and Policies is a master track within the MSc in Urban Management and Development that links theory and practice by working with concepts and tools of urban planning, policies, governance, justice, and sustainability. The track addresses the role of urban planning in rapid urbanisation, informal settlements, social deprivation, growing inequalities, economic decline, and changing climatic circumstances. Through the lens of urban justice, you will analyse how cities function and how strategic planning and policies contribute to steering urban development processes. Next to learning how to engage with different stakeholders and applying urban planning and policy tools, you will also reflect on the implications of different planning approaches on cities' socio-spatial dynamics. Finally, you will study how the spatial distribution of services, infrastructure, opportunities, and social practices in space and power relations in decision-making impact the city.
How is your year organized?
The first block shares courses on urban complexity, governance & participation, and data analytics with the other master tracks. In the second block, most courses will be track-specific and you will be working more closely with your master track peers. The third and last block will be entirely dedicated to your thesis. It will further guide you in writing your thesis proposal on a topic relevant to your master track.
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Programme Curriculum
Block 1 - September to January
The students will explore key concepts in urban governance, corruption, planning, participation, and urban finances through a blend of theoretical and practical learning. Through an interdisciplinary lens, and by discussing case studies from both the Global North and the Global South, in this course students will explore theoretical/conceptual frameworks, indicators, and strategies aimed at fostering inclusive, participatory governance in urban settings.
With over half of the population living in urban areas, rising to 70% in 2050, it is of ever-increasing importance to understand how cities work and evolve. Complex and interrelated economic, social, physical, and environmental processes constantly transform cities. Students will learn to view cities as Complex Adaptive Systems, providing insights into their dynamic, self-organizing nature and varying development paths.
With over half of the world's population now living in urban areas, cities are growing larger and more complex. This course addresses this complexity through two modules:
- Quantitative Data Analysis: Students will learn to manage, visualize, and analyze various urban data sources to address research questions and make informed decisions.
- Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis: Students will gain skills in collecting and interpreting in-depth qualitative data to understand the intricate dynamics and experiences within urban environments.
Blocks 2 - January to April
In this first module, students will be introduced to the diversity in planning approaches and the evolution of planning theories and practices. Students will learn how the field of planning is characterised by fragmentation and heterogeneity of views and interests, representing the complex worlds in which planning practices take place. Questions about what sustainability, resilience, inclusivity and justice mean (and for whom) within the context of urban planning and what role planning plays in their implementation will be covered extensively in this module.
In the second module, students will learn how the future of cities, and the cities of the future, are being thought about and acted upon in diverse regional and political contexts. In treating urban visions as a social, cultural, and politically fraught reality with a profound influence on the present, students will explore concepts of participatory planning and deliberative democracy and scrutinize the modalities, processes, and challenges of public participation, drawing on case studies from across the world.
In the third and final module of the course, students will grapple with the challenges and opportunities for decision-making and implementation within a complex planning context. This module will focus on three implementation elements: socio-spatial data analysis, policy design & evaluation,, and stakeholder engagement. At the end of the module, students will know how to navigate the competing interests and power dynamics between stakeholders, comprehend the various stages of policymaking, and reflect on the impact of policy interventions on urban socio-political dynamics.
For the case study exercises, you will work with other students to examine closely urban development and planning projects in diverse regional contexts, including Rotterdam. In the first exercise, , you will focus on the project’s vision and its legitimation, the democratic process followed, frictions produced in the process, counters to those frictions, and ultimately the influence of all these factors on the project’s realization. In the second exercise, you will analyse the urban-social characteristics of a project proposal and develop a suitable policy response to it.
The Master's programme at IHS includes a significant focus on designing and implementing academic research in urban studies. The Research Design (RD) course is essential for guiding students in creating academic research within the social sciences and independently developing their Master’s thesis. Alongside the two Urban Data Analytics courses (UDA 1: quantitative and UDA 2: qualitative), the RD course equips students with the necessary skills and knowledge to design, implement, and compose a research project that meets the standards of a Master’s thesis.
Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, allow to capture and analyze geographic data and spatial information easily and efficiently. Already decades ago their usefulness and popularity prompted companies as well as the open source community to develop high-level GIS software solutions, applicable to many disciplines and publicly accessible (QGIS is ahigh-level open-source tool, used in this course). GIS tools include plenty of possibilities to process, analyze and visualize quantitative as well as qualitative information typically used in research in the social sciences. This course will explain frequently used GIS techniques and demonstrate their applicability across typical cases covered in the UMD program. With lectures, examples and point-and-click instructions, you will learn how to create new insights for your research by solving geographic problems with GIS tools.
Effective urban resilience depends on strategically aligning city capacities with risks, and community needs through a comprehensive resilience strategy. This hands-on workshop equips future urban planners, policymakers, and stakeholders with practical skills to navigate the complexities in resilience strategy development, fostering sustainable urban development and proactive resilience-building efforts.
This workshop comprises two sessions based on the City Resilience Framework of the Resilient Cities Network. In the first session, participants will work on assessing urban risks (acute shocks and chronic stresses) in a selected city. They will prioritize short-term and long-term threats and categorize them by severity of impact and likelihood of occurrence. In the second session, participants will develop a resilience diagnosis based on the 12 guiding principles, drivers, and actions of the “Resilience Wheel”. The diagnostic helps identify the city’s existing resources or strengths to tackle the identified threats. Participants will then develop specific strategies that tackle the most threats with the least actions and investment. Participants will work in teams, and present their processes, strategies, and conclusions at the end of the workshop.
Block 3 - April to August
The research proposal is linked and complementary to the Research Design (RD) course. In the RD course participants are guided to design academic research within the social sciences and to develop their research proposal.
The RD course will teach participants how to develop the problem statement, research questions, research objectives their theoretical framework.
Designing and implementing academic research in the field of urban studies is a major component of the master's programme at IHS. During this period students will write their master thesis on their chosen topic guided by a supervisor.
At the end of the course participants should be able to:
- Critically assess socio-spatial dynamics in an urban context based on specific concepts and theories addressed during the course.
- Identify and engage with stakeholders in a planning process and analyse their interests and needs.
- Apply concepts and tools related to strategy development, integrating social, environmental, economic, spatial, financial and institutional components of urban plans.
- Reflect on the qualities of planning and policies, the interests and values that plans and policies represent and their impact on existing dynamics.
- Come up with creative solutions by synthesizing and combining concepts and ideas that critically address socio-spatial dynamics in complex urban problems, individually and in team.
- Convincingly communicate ideas, plans and arguments, supported by theory, orally, visually and in writing. .
- Beyond shelter – Impact of tenements on social inclusion/exclusion in middle-income neighbourhoods of Nairobi. A Case study of Donholm
- Water supply interventions in informal settlements: Factors influencing the usage of automated water dispensers. A case study of Mathare Settlement in Nairobi City.
- Analysis of Urban Residential Location Choice Kampala, Uganda
- The self-organized citizen and its outcome in urban regeneration: a case study of Bangrak-Khlong San District, Bangkok
- The Effects of Capacity Building in Alleviating Joblessness in Resettlement Sites: The Case of Southville 7 Calauan, Philippines
- Assessing the impact of involuntary resettlement on the perceived quality of life: Case of resettled residents of Ubumwe to Batsinda
- Analyzing the influence of small-scale rental housing market on bottom-up inclusionary housing in middle-income neighbourhoods of Kigali City
- Assessing the influence of the customary land tenure on the growth of informal settlement in Oshiuman, Amasaman district in Accra
- Physical planning and urban spatial disparities: Analyzing residential social disparities in Kampala as influenced by physical planning and self-organization
- Freeland of Oosterwold - Organic Urban Expansion and Community Building in Oosterwold
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