What the programme entails
Webinar on Urban Environment, Sustainability & Climate Change
Learn all about the Urban Environment, Sustainability & Climate Change Master track of IHS. Learn more about the master track content directly from Dr Paul Rabé and Dr Alexander Los — the programme coordinators themselves! Watch this video to discover more about the programme content, and theory and recent trends and developments related to urban climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Climate-neutral and resilient cities are essential prerequisites for tackling the growing threat and impacts of climate change. True climate resilience requires systemic, nexus thinking around the key natural resources of land, water, and the atmosphere.
The Urban Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change: Integrated Management of Land, Water and Atmosphere programme is a master track within the MSc in Urban Management and Development. This master's track will examine different conceptual, theoretical, and practical approaches to sustainable urban transformation and climate-neutral and resilient cities worldwide. It equips students with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate and pursue urban transformation in relation to the universal challenge of sustainable development and the reality of climate change. Next to environmental resilience and climate mitigation, which is the programme's primary focus, the track will examine critical social, economic and governance dimensions of climate-neutral and resilient cities.
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
Underlying challenges to the goal of climate neutrality include the unsustainable development modes still at the basis of most processes. This module introduces the environmental, social, and institutional background knowledge related to climate change, which is required to better understand social inequalities, regional risks, and climate extremes. The module introduces selected frameworks that will be used throughout the specialization track, including a spatial layer model and “Doughnut economics”.
This module presents the environmental background knowledge related to climate change, regional risks, and climate extremes. The concept of sustainable transition will be related to resilience, which will be consolidated in a workshop on climate sustainability and transition. The objective of this module is to enable participants to make informed decisions to help reduce environmental risks and to mitigate climate change.
Water plays a major role in the earth’s climate. Its natural cycle, from the oceans to the atmosphere through evaporation, then by precipitation back to land returning via rivers and aquifers to the oceans, has a decisive impact on regional climatologies and global climate patterns. This module introduces the links between climate and the water cycle and explains the interplay between climate change, sea level, clouds, rainfall, and future climate. Also covered are extreme events—such as droughts and flooding—and their drivers and effects.
In this module "land" comprises ecosystems and land-based (urban) activities including the use, management and degradation of land, and food security. “Land” and climate are linked to each other in a virtuous or vicious cycle: land ecosystems and land biodiversity are vulnerable to climate change and weather extremes, while (un)sustainable land management in “business-as-usual” approaches can contribute to increasing the negative effects of climate change on ecosystems and societies. This week details the principal ways in which land-based drivers can influence the climate and analyzes the political economy and governance dimensions of these drivers. We will consider the “land-water nexus”, emphasizing how land/land use and water/water management are intimately related and how this relationship is at the heart of (un)sustainable development and climate risk.
Our common goods, such as the atmosphere and oceans, are systematically abused to dump our waste, nearly always without consequences for the polluters. Urban air quality is thereby of particular concern due to persistent exposure of citizens to high air pollution concentrations which negatively affects human health and natural ecosystems. Increasing extreme weather events, caused by the changing climate, exacerbate the situation furthermore. This module illustrates how urban air pollution develops and explains the urban heat island (UHI) effect and its negative consequences on human health and the complex urban microclimate. The role of land and the effect of land use change on the urban microclimate is critically discussed to obtain more insight in the negative consequences of unsustainable practices on the build and natural urban environment. Particular attention will be given to risk reduction, justice, and vulnerable population groups.
This module delves into the sustainable transition and climate adaptation process during a three-week period focusing on responses to sustainability challenges and climate risk. The first week will cover the key pillars of sustainability transition, institutionalism, and energy transition and introduces nature-based solutions. Contributions during the second week elaborate on environmental and social resilience in an urban context, which includes lectures on green gentrification and urban justice, infrastructure, practical aspects of adaptation and resilience and mainstreaming pathways for nature-based solutions. The last week of Module 4 examines how to achieve sustainable transitions (with a special emphasis on cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis and financing resilience) and the institutional and advocacy approaches needed to build transitions (with case studies of the Netherlands). In this module, the coordinators will present in detail the terms of reference of the final advisory (group) assignment.
Module 5 wraps up the UESC content modules with a critical reflection of prospects for sustainable transitions and their implications for governance, related to the spatial layer model and “Doughnut economics”. Students will contribute to this synthesis in a two-day workshop, in which they will be invited to reflect on transition pathways using theories, frameworks, and applications related to their own thesis research, which they will share in short individual presentations.
The final advisory assignment represents the capstone challenge of the UESC Master track. Participants are expected to integrate their knowledge of climate and sustainable development transitions acquired during the entire track and apply it to a real-life and complex sustainability and adaptation problem faced by a client organization. The main question in the assignment is the same as that for the Master track as a whole: what transitions are required to address the problems at hand, and what kinds of adaptation and mitigation are possible in the local environmental, social, financial, and institutional context that reflect these transitions? As part of Module 6, UESC students will also present their strategy and recommendations (as a group) to the client organization.
A geographical information systems (GIS) module will run in parallel with the content lecture blocks during the specialisation period. The GIS module will use examples from the content lecture blocks in this period.
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.
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, the students should be able to:
- Reflect on the land/water/atmosphere nexus and its interlinkages with climate resilience and climate neutrality.
- Critically engage with frameworks of sustainable development, such as “Doughnut Economics” (Kate Raworth, 2017) and sustainable transition frameworks, risk frameworks, and their relationship with climate change.
- Critically examine the concepts of climate adaptation and mitigation and their various components and dimensions, in theory and practice.
- Investigate climate mitigation and adaptation tools and solutions to realize climate neutral and resilient cities.
- Explain the mutual relationship between environmental resilience and other forms of resilience (social, economic, and institutional).
- Evaluate the multi-faceted principles of climate “risk” and “resilience” and apply these principles to land, water, atmosphereir, NBS and to climate resilience in urban areas.
- Design and present an integrated climate adaptation and mitigation strategy for a client organization based on actual data, circumstances, and needs.
- Urban sustainability transitions: Theory and practice in European cities.
- Barriers and drivers of circular economy initiatives in Amsterdam.
- Financing climate change adaptation: Which instruments are most effective?
- Urban water systems and adaptation to climate change in Southeast Asian cities.
- The urban governance of sustainable transport systems.
- Managing urban energy systems to meet climate change objectives: Trends and innovations.
- The roles of community resilience and risk appraisal in climate change adaptation in Chennai.
- Developing an urban resilience index: Application to 10.000 urban areas worldwide.
- Which factors are conducive to successful climate mitigation projects at urban level?
- The effect of city size and population density on CO2 emissions: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
- Nature-based solutions for flood reduction in African cities.
- Assessing climate change risk and prioritizing adaptation measures using GIS.
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