"The central message is that urban change is global, but not uniform."

Relevance to current urban trends

The renewed programme in Global Urban Change starts from the idea that urban trends cannot really be understood separately. Technological innovation, for example, can create new possibilities for urban services and governance, but it can also produce new forms of inequality or exclusion. Climate resilience is not only about infrastructure, but also about housing, land, social justice, institutions and access to resources. Students therefore look at contemporary urban change from several connected perspectives. We do not present smart technologies or other innovations as automatic solutions. Instead, students are encouraged to ask who benefits, who may be excluded, and how these developments interact with existing urban systems.

The new name came together with a broader redesign of the programme, so it is really much more than a rebranding exercise. The new structure also gives us more flexibility to respond to emerging urban issues. Especially through the elective modules that have been introduced, we can update topics from year to year and bring new developments into the curriculum as they become relevant. 

Theory and practice are not separate things

The programme includes very concrete professional skills, from writing policy briefs and stakeholder engagement to workshops on topics such as urban resilience. Students work with real cases and problems, and many of our academic staff also work as practitioners or consultants, so they bring that experience - and sometimes their own projects - directly into the classroom. 

Our classroom is extremely international, and students learn every day how to work with people who approach problems very differently, communicate across cultural and disciplinary boundaries, negotiate ideas and work together. That is a skill in itself. The same is true of academic assignments. A policy brief teaches you to make a clear, evidence-based argument. A presentation teaches you to communicate and persuade. Group work teaches you to collaborate, manage differences and get something done together. These are very practical skills, whatever direction you take afterwards. We are not trying to train students for one specific job.

Student journey, curriculum and new modules

The programme really moves from breadth to depth, and then to independence. At the beginning, students build a shared foundation and are exposed to some of the major debates shaping cities today, from climate urbanism and financialisation to postcolonial perspectives and urban complexity. At the same time, they start developing the research and analytical skills they will need throughout the year. From there, the programme becomes much more personal. Through the specialisation, deepening modules and advanced methods, students can increasingly shape their own trajectory around the questions and topics they are most interested in. And then comes the thesis. I think this is where you really see the journey come together. Students work much more independently and have to bring together everything they have learned – conceptually, methodologically and practically – into one piece of research on an urban issue they genuinely care about. 

By graduation, the aim is not only that they know more about cities, but that they have developed their own way of asking questions, analysing problems and producing meaningful (urban) knowledge.

Students now have more freedom to shape the programme around their own interests. They choose between two specialisations: Urban Socio-Spatial Transformations and Urban Environment and Climate Change. Within those they can go deeper into the topics that interest them most.

The range of modules is quite broad, from housing, inequality, governance and participation to digital transformation, climate justice, nature-based solutions, and circular economy.

When it comes to the topics that best embody the scope of the new programme name, one good example is urban complexity. Students examine how challenges that are often treated separately are actually interconnected. A housing shortage, for instance, can also be a question of land, finance, inequality, environmental policy and political conflict. Students learn to map these relationships rather than searching for a single, isolated explanation. A second example is climate resilience. Students move beyond purely technical solutions and examine how climate risks connect to water, land, energy, housing, social inequality and governance. In the urban resilience strategy workshop, they work with the challenges and trade-offs involved in developing a strategy for a city. A third example is digital transformation. Students critically explore how AI, data and smart technologies are changing urban governance and everyday life. They assess not only what these tools can do, but also who controls them, who benefits and what new inequalities they might create.

The students also choose an advanced research method, such as participatory research, comparative urban research, impact evaluation or machine learning for policy. For me, this is one of the strongest elements of the new structure: the combination of specialisation, deepening module, advanced method and individual thesis means that each student can really build their own trajectory. Ideally, these choices connect not only to what they want to research in their thesis, but also to where they want to go afterwards.

Advice for future applicants 

As a Programme Manager, but also as a lecturer and researcher, I experience the programme from several different angles, and I think the new structure creates much more space for those different parts to connect. I am especially looking forward to the deepening modules. They are smaller and more focused, and they allow staff to teach much more directly from their own expertise and from the questions they are currently working on. At the same time, I think this format gives students much more space to bring in their own knowledge and experiences. Many of the issues we discuss are global, but they are experienced very differently across cities and regions. 

I am also excited about the flexibility students now have to shape their own trajectory. Students can build a path that really reflects their own interests, and I am very curious to see the different combinations that emerge.

But in the end, what excites me most about the programme has not really changed. We have just finished one graduation and are welcoming a new cohort, and every year I am reminded that the most special part is the students themselves: the diversity of their academic and professional backgrounds, the cities and countries they come from, and the very different perspectives they bring into the classroom. I think the new programme simply gives us more opportunities to make that diversity an even more central part of how we teach and learn.