Sustainable Cities MSc

This Sustainable Cities MSc is an interdisciplinary programme that provides a critical understanding of how cities are shaped by human and physical processes, enabling a fuller appreciation of the connections between sustainable urban and environmental futures. Our teaching focus extends beyond the technical infrastructure of sustainable urban development to consider the importance of the social infrastructures that help ensure urban resilience in the face of climate change and global environmental shifts. We’ll cover critical social science perspectives on sustainable cities, with a focus on human geography, not engineering. At the same time, we will help you to develop transferable skills which are embedded in our learning and assessment schemes and enhance your practical skills in data handling, interpretation and use.

Key benefits

• Get an in-depth appreciation of how the future of cities will be shaped by contested understandings of global environmental shift and change.
• Develop a critical understanding of urban responses to the challenges of sustainability, recognising that governance of sustainability requires both social and technical solutions.
• Gain an understanding of a range of international examples, whilst benefitting from London as a laboratory in which to study urban sustainability.
• Specialise in issues of social or environmental sustainability by choosing from a range of optional modules taught by the Geography Department and beyond.
• Learn from guest practitioners and policy speakers.
• Combine academic theory and real-world experience within our environment and society internship module.
• Develop your links with the Urban Futures research group and access ongoing academic research work about the way that urban knowledges can help to produce more socially and environmentally sustainable cities.
• Develop your critical understanding of the interrelationships between urbanization and human lifestyles, politics, economy, ecology and environment.
• Identify the challenges of managing cities in an integrated and sustainable manner.
• Help you to develop relevant transferable skills which are embedded in our learning and assessment schemes.
• Enhance your practical skills in data handling, interpretation and use.
• An optional Internship module helps students take their first steps towards employment in a relevant vocational field.

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