King's College London

This Sustainable Cities MSc is an interdisciplinary programme providing a critical understanding of how cities are shaped by human and physical processes. It builds deep understanding 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 in collecting, analysing and presenting different kinds of data as well as effectively communicating your ideas using written, verbal and visual mediums to a diverse range of audiences.

This Sustainable Cities Master's links to the Urban Futures research group, focusing on ongoing research about the way that urban knowledge might produce more socially and environmentally sustainable cities.

You'll be able to follow your own interests in social or environmental sustainability by choosing from a range of optional interdisciplinary modules across the Geography Department and beyond. And if you opt to join our environmental internship programme*, you'll get the chance to supplement your academic prowess with real-life urban policy experience.

You'll take an international view of cities while being taught in London, which acts as the perfect urban laboratory for the world. You'll build your awareness of the historical context and global contemporary ideas and practices relating to sustainable cities, while also studying how London's distinctive post-colonial geographies require particular policy adaptations.

You'll get to examine the key challenges of implementing policies that promote sustainable urbanism, and 'learn by doing'. You'll join Sustainable Cities MSc graduates who have gone on to work in sustainability consultancy organisations, local authorities around the world, NGOs focused on urban issues, and private-sector urban development companies.

With this Sustainable Cities MSc, you’ll get an advanced understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities, with a specific focus on the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies and environments. You’ll learn from a combination of pure and applied research methods from human and physical geography.