Sustainable Cities

The degree combines pure and applied research methods from human and physical geography leading to an advanced level understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities. Specific foci will be the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies, environments and social structure and process.

The MSc Sustainable Cities programme provides advanced level understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities, with a specific focus on the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies and environments.

The programme aims to:

• develop a critical understanding of the interrelationships between urbanization and human lifestyles, politics, economy, ecology and environment.
• develop a critical understanding of human impacts on physical processes in cities, and the implications for habitation and liveability. 
• develop an ability to evaluate critically advanced scholarship in the field of urban policy, with reference to sustainable environmental management. 
• promote initiative and the exercise of independent critical judgment in identifying, analysing and solving problems at an advanced level. 
• develop relevant transferable skills embedded in the learning and assessment schemes in the programme. 
• develop practical skills in data handling, interpretation, and use, and develop skills in (inter) relating physical dynamics to social, political and management processes. 
• enable those with first degrees in a range of disciplines – geography, sociology, environmental science, engineering etc to focus on the challenges of managing cities in an integrated and sustainable manner
• enable those taking the programme to deploy scientific and social and economic theory within a sustainability framework which takes into account the need to address the needs of society, the economy and the protection of environmental services.