What the programme entails
Webinar on Urban Housing & Land Justice
Learn more about the master track content directly from Dr Maartje van Eerd and Ore Fika — the programme coordinators themselves! Watch this video to discover more about the programme content, and how the right to land, housing and urban services can be achieved.
Access for all to affordable housing and accompanying basic social, economic and physical infrastructure and services, such as schools, health centres, employment opportunities, public transport and public space, remains a global challenge rooted in unequal access to land. The result is often seen in processes of urban socio-spatial segregation and exclusion, urban poverty and homelessness across the global north and south.
The Urban Housing and Land Justice: Equitable Access to Sustainable Land, Housing & Services programme is a master track within the MSc in Urban Management and Development. The programme will theoretically review and approach housing, land justice, and injustice complexities and visit its practical implications, real-life outcomes, and consequences while using a wide range of teaching methodologies such as lectures, participatory discussions, educational games, excursions, group exercises and workshops. Students will examine (in)justice and (in)equality through socio-political, socio-legal, economic, environmental and governance perspectives regarding enabling land and housing rights and access to land, adequate housing, and basic urban services. The track will focus on examining and evaluating land and housing socio-political economy and their complex process related to equity and social, gender and environmental justice.
Participants will analyse the complex theoretical debate surrounding these topics and their place in sustainable development and building resilient urban and peri-urban communities and societies. Students will learn to operationalise the concept of adequate housing by applying the 5 A's Principles of Adequate Housing, namely Availability, Accessibility, Affordability, Acceptability and Adaptability, while at the same time looking into how these principles interact with the housing supply value chain in which land assembly and acquisition is the first step. At the end of the master track, students will be able to critically evaluate the complexities in land and housing (in)justice and the socio-economic, ecological, and spatial strategies employed to remedy and mitigate them.
Organised in two parts, the master track enables students to understand and critically evaluate the complex legal, political, institutional, social, and economic structures and processes that facilitate or impede access to land, housing, and urban services. Emphasis is placed on empowering disadvantaged and marginalised groups. In the programme’s first part, students will jointly discuss the complexity behind processes and structures in the governance, societal impact, and economics (including finance) of land, housing, and urban services. In the second part of the programme, students will have the opportunity to focus on two overarching topics: land and housing.
Students in this group will address the social, economic, and environmental challenges that create inefficiency in land development, unequal access to property markets and inequitable distribution of resources and benefits. It assesses land value capture principles and related land instruments to achieve equitable and sustainable development.
Students in this group will explore further the practical application of the 5As principles of adequate housing by looking deeper into non-conventional approaches to housing, such as community-led housing provision, (aided) self-help housing and incremental housing. Throughout this focal point, we will emphasise the gender implications of these approaches.
How is the year organised?
The first block shares courses on urban complexity, governance & finance, data analytics and research design with the other master tracks. In the second block, your 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.
Academic Calendar
2024-2025
Exam Regulations
2024-2025
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
Addressing equity, social justice and human rights, this module analyses and evaluates the complex process of housing rights and its symbiotic relationship with land and property rights. It evaluates processes of privatisation, commodification and financialisation of housing and land in relation to housing and land rights, tenure security, and (forced)evictions. It discusses how rights relate to justice. And it reviews gender and environmental justice as it pertains to housing and land. Finally, the module covers legal approaches to achieving justice and human rights.
The second module addresses the financialisation of land. As land values increase, unequal access to adequate housing and urban services such as amenities, infrastructure, and green areas rises. The module analyses urban and peri-urban land markets and their inefficiencies. It reviews the use of land value capture for equitable development and reduction of market inequalities. Addressing the financing of public goods such as the provision of housing and urban services like basic infrastructure and services, public and green spaces necessary for sustainable cities and communities. Key economic instruments such as development exactions, impact fees, property and land taxes and valuation, and betterment charges are reviewed for land value redistribution.
Continuing with Land Value Capture (LVC) Instruments, the third module focuses on land-use regulation and spatial land instruments used for equitable access to land, housing, and urban services. The module discusses the theoretical debates surrounding the use of LVC, the assessment and evaluation and applicability of instruments used in both the global north and south that include the transfer of development rights, inclusionary zoning, community land trust, land readjustment and ZEIS and the Social function of the land.
This module delivers topics on both the contribution of housing to the economy, and the environment in relationship to sustainable development. Focusing on affordability, the first part of the module looks at the housing value chain and housing finance interventions, including mortgages, micro credits, incremental financing and subsidies. Part two of the module reviews housing and the environment in line with sustainable development and resilience. It looks at housing adaptability and sustainable human settlement planning in response also to climate change.
In this module, policy approaches to informal and formal housing will be presented and analysed in relation to the provision of adequate housing, equity and social-spatial justice. The approaches discussed cover a wide spread of top-down to bottom-up approaches; and conventional to more innovative applications such as social housing, rental housing, slum upgrading and resettlement, incremental approaches like sites and services, and people-led housing and housing for special needs groups like refugees and students.
This module discusses the housing and land nexus. Governance of this nexus is discussed in relation to the three pillars of urban sustainability (social, economic and the environment), urban planning and urban socio-spatial justice.
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”.
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.
Key components
The course will focus on equitable access to land, adequate housing and urban service to improve the quality of life for all.
The course views land, housing and urban services through the pillars of sustainability. It covers the socio-legal, economic and environmental components of land, housing and urban services.
Students will be acquainted with and debate academic theories and concepts, discuss international case studies and policies, and participate in excursions to real-life cases to link theory with practice.
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