The study programme in a nutshell
Climate-neutral and resilient cities are essential prerequisites for tackling the growing threat and impacts of climate change. True climate resilience requires systemic, nexus thinking around the key natural resources. The Urban Environment and Climate Change programme is a specialisation within the MSc in Urban Management and Development. This track will examine different conceptual, theoretical, and practical approaches to sustainable urban transformation and climate-neutral and resilient cities worldwide. It equips students with the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate and pursue urban transformation in relation to the universal challenge of sustainable development and the reality of climate change. Next to environmental resilience and climate mitigation, the track will examine critical social, economic and governance dimensions of climate-neutral and resilient cities focusing on topis such as urban society, nature-based solutions and circular economy.
What the programme entails
The first block shares courses on core period subjects with the Urban Socio-Spatial Transformations specialisation. In the second block the students will follow one of the two programmes. Within each specialisation, they get to chose from a number of modules to define their own learning trajectory. These combinations are called ‘focal points’. The exact content of the focal points will be shared soon. The third and last block will be entirely dedicated to the thesis. It will further guide the writing of the thesis proposal on a topic relevant to the master track.
Teaching at Erasmus University Rotterdam
Our teaching methods are unique
IHS faculty members engage in real-world cases globally, integrating challenges, learnings, and questions from these experiences into our curriculum.You apply everything you learn
Students engage in a diverse learning experience through lectures, case studies, debates, simulations, assignments, and field visits in Rotterdam and other Dutch cities, with the option for thesis fieldwork abroad.
Programme Curriculum
Please note that the curriculum may be subject to change.
Block 1 - September to December
Contemporary Debates in Urban Studies is an interdisciplinary course that critically examines the contemporary landscapes of cities and urbanisation worldwide. As urbanisation accelerates and transforms societies, this course invites students to engage with the latest debates, theories, and challenges shaping urban life today. Issues that are addressed include spatial boundaries, political economy of cities, AI and datafication, and posthuman urbanisms.
This course focuses on the question why cities are in equal parts changing dramatically and stuck in the same place for a long time. Urban development is often path-dependent but also features transformative changes. As a consequence, cities neither develop in the same direction and at the same pace, nor do successful ‘recipes’ in one place work in another location. So, how can we understand this complexity and how can we harness it for a more aware urban development and management? That is the core question of this course.
This course introduces students to the design, practice and analysis of qualitative research in the field of urban studies. It provides a compact but comprehensive foundation, covering qualitative data collection and analysis.
Like the course on qualitative methods, this course introduces students to the design of quantitative research and analysis of quantitative data in urban studies. It is a short but encompassing introduction to the nuts and bolts of quantitative research.
After finishing the previous four courses, students will get to chose one of the method courses. Please see the courses below.
Advanced Quantitative Methods: Policy Impact
Urban policy questions are increasingly complex and often involve difficult trade-offs, demanding a strong evidence base for sound decision-making. Do restrictions on short-term rentals like Airbnb increase housing availability? Can improved transport links reduce neighbourhood poverty? Do carbon taxes make construction firms more sustainable? This course focuses on how the effects of urban policies can be assessed.
Advanced Quantitative Methods: Machine Learning for Policy
As cities and societies become more digitalised, vast streams of data—from satellite imagery to social media—demand new analytical approaches. Machine-learning (ML) methods have expanded rapidly in recent years, yet they are often presented in highly technical ways with little connection to socio-economic or policy questions. This course remedies that gap. It provides statistical-learning foundations that combine econometric inference and machine-learning techniques, enabling students to analyse diverse datasets, and build and validate predictive models.
Advanced methods in comparative urban research
(Please note the content of this course is subject to change.)
When we travel to another city, we might observe differences from where we live: the language spoken by people and food can change, opening hours of shops as well, or even the side of the road where cars are allowed to drive. We might also identify similarities: people might still meet in urban spaces and at the dehors of cafés. Simply put, cities around the world can be similar and different to a certain degree. How to then analytically approach and examine differences and similarities across cities rigorously? This course addresses these questions.
Advanced Methods: Participatory Research
(Please note the content of this course is subject to change)
This course equips students with the knowledge and skills to design and conduct participatory and action-oriented research in urban settings. It provides a critical understanding of how research can move beyond extractive practices towards a tool for co-creation, reciprocity, and locally grounded impact. The course also provides guidance for the ethical and political challenges of doing research in different urban settings.
Blocks 2- January to April
Water creates living places, shapes our societies, bonds with communities and nourishes human culture and history. It is a key natural resource in our daily life. While essential to all life, it is also a source of profound crises, in which water is increasingly scarce, destructive and polluted. As water is perceived as endangered and dangerous, we should re-examine the implications of waters for human societies. We will study water from an interdisciplinary perspective, which includes the principles of natural science (e.g. hydrological cycle), the problem-solving approaches of engineering (e.g. water-related risk assessment) and the critical analysis of social science (e.g. political ecology). We explore how water creates and shapes environment and society, how human interventions transform water systems, and how these changes facilitate or hinder urban sustainable development.
Cities are increasingly challenged by climate change, biodiversity loss, and rapid urbanisation. This module introduces students to nature-based solutions (NBS) as an integrated approach to building sustainable, resilient, just, and liveable urban environments. Students will explore how natural and semi-natural systems deliver essential benefits—such as flood regulation, urban cooling, carbon sequestration, recreation, and cultural identity—and how these can be harnessed through urban planning, policy, land governance, and finance.
Circular economy has been receiving increasing attention worldwide as a way to overcome the current production and consumption model based on continuous growth and increasing resource throughput. This module explores the interaction between transition theory and circularity, providing both theoretical and practical insights. The module also delves into the paradoxes faced during the transition to circular economy (e.g. rebound effect with increased efficiency leading to increased consumption, conflict between economic growth and sustainability, balancing short-term and long-term goals), and the different potential tensions such as technological (e.g. scalability, technological lock-ins), economic (e.g. market acceptance, business model innovation), social and cultural challenges (e.g. behavioural change, customer buy-in).
This module introduces the core issues in climate change, its impact on cities, and climate change adaptation measures. Students will be introduced to the basic physical principles, and will be challenged to critically assess and debate the ongoing techno-solutionism that is prevalent in cities (in the context of transition theory).
We ask whether the transition discussed in ‘Urban Climate Change’ is achievable in different urban contexts and what instruments, innovations, and policy measures are needed to make this happen. This module sheds light on this question from different perspectives—technical, social and political/governance. Students are challenged to critically analyse the complex political, economic, and governance dimensions responsible for the vicious cycle at the local, regional, national, and global levels.
A geographical information systems (GIS) module will run in parallel with the content lecture blocks during the specialisation period. The GIS module will use examples from the content lecture blocks in this period.
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.
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”. The diagnostic helps identify the city’s existing resources or strengths to tackle the identified threats. Participants will then develop specific strategies that tackle the most threats with the least actions and investment. Participants will work in teams, and present their processes, strategies, and conclusions at the end of the workshop.
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.
Wondering what thesis research you can do?
- Urban sustainability transitions: Theory and practice in European cities.
- Barriers and drivers of circular economy initiatives in Amsterdam.
- Financing climate change adaptation: Which instruments are most effective?
- Urban water systems and adaptation to climate change in Southeast Asian cities.
- The urban governance of sustainable transport systems.
- Managing urban energy systems to meet climate change objectives: Trends and innovations.
- The roles of community resilience and risk appraisal in climate change adaptation in Chennai.
- Developing an urban resilience index: Application to 10.000 urban areas worldwide.
- Which factors are conducive to successful climate mitigation projects at urban level?
- The effect of city size and population density on CO2 emissions: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration.
- Nature-based solutions for flood reduction in African cities.
- Assessing climate change risk and prioritizing adaptation measures using GIS.