The study programme in a nutshell
Cities today are shaped by rapid social, economic, and technological transformations, creating both opportunities and inequalities. Understanding these dynamics is essential for designing inclusive and sustainable urban futures. The Urban Socio-Spatial Transformations programme is a specialisation within the MSc in Urban Management and Development. This track will equip you with the knowledge and tools to analyse the drivers of urban change, from digitalisation and technological innovation to social and economic inequalities. You will explore key issues such as urban governance, housing and land policies, and the impact of emerging technologies on cities, while learning to design strategies that promote equitable and resilient urban development.
What the programme entails
The first block shares courses on core period subjects with the Urban Environment & Climate Change specialisation. In the second block the students will follow one of the two programmes. Within each specialisation, they get to choose 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
Cities as centres of today’s global transformations are confronted with profound challenges that transform their spatial, institutional, social, and economic landscapes. These include struggles over land and housing, dilemmas in planning and governance, and deep inequalities shaped by gender, class, race and other social differences. This course examines those challenges by focusing on four connected themes: planning and governance, land, housing, and urban justice.
Please note the content of this course is subject to change.
As urban landscapes continue to evolve, speculation increasingly shapes the conception, development, and transformation of cities. This course will explore the diverse ways in which speculative practices influence urban life, from financial institutions betting on rising asset values to city governments issuing municipal bonds for development projects, and risk analysts forecasting needs for future-proofing cities.
The smart city is now the normality of contemporary cities. However, great digital divides also emerge, depending on how available these technologies are in (mega-)cities, or on our ability to effectively dialogue with technological devices. This course will offer an introduction to the main theories of Science and Technology Studies (STS) to understand what technologies “do” to societies and also how social, political, economic and cultural factors influence the design and use of technologies. We will also critically look at the concept of smart cities, and move towards the concept of digital(ised) cities instead, where (big and open) data-based technologies are central. Special attention is paid to algorithmic governance.
Innovation has always been at the core of urban transformation. Today, technological change unfolds at unprecedented speed in areas such as artificial intelligence, which is reshaping work, and digitalisation, which affects nearly all aspects of life. In contrast, other shifts, such as green mobility or circular economy solutions, often advance more slowly than expected. This course introduces the economics of innovation from an evolutionary perspective: the incentives, drivers, and dynamics that underpin technological change and development outcomes. We examine how new technologies replace old ones through cycles of creative destruction, and why some places become hubs of knowledge creation and growth while others are left behind. We ask how digital technologies transform work—will AI open opportunities or deepen divides? Finally, we connect urban innovation to global sustainability challenges, exploring the frictions of green and digital transitions.
The course offers a critical exploration of the persistent and growing inequalities shaping urban life in both developed and developing contexts. In particular, students will examine why larger cities tend to exhibit higher levels of social, spatial, and economic inequality, drawing on recent empirical evidence and global trends. Students will engage with foundational concepts, definitions, and measurement tools used to assess inequality across multiple dimensions, including access to housing, employment, services, and opportunities. Students will analyze the multiple forces fueling urban inequality, including technological change, deindustrialization, skill-biased labor demand, migration, and the rise of the gig economy.
This module examines how diverse policy approaches shape and transform housing approaches and land governance systems. It will focus on how these policies influence the provision of adequate housing, access to land, equity and socio-spatial justice. It highlights the interconnected nature of housing and land policies, recognizing that land security and land tenure form the foundation for sustainable, inclusive and adequate housing development.
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.
Full course guide
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.
Full course guide
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.
Full course guide
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.
Full course guide
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?
- Social Cohesion through Collaborative Public Space Production: Benefits & Contraints in Rotterdam's Tarwewijk
- The impacts of institutional factors on sustainable mobility transitions: A comparative study between Prishtina and Ljubljana
- Proximity and Innovations: Configuring Innovative Networks for Cross-Border Mobility in the Cali-Baja Megaregion
- Niche-Regime Dynamics in the Philippine Public Transport Modernization Program: An Analysis of External Innovation, Multi-Level Learning and Institutional Embedding
- Anchored in Place: Exploring the Influence of Place Attachment on Flood Preparedness among Female-Headed Households in Mathare, Nairobi
- The Management of Public Land Leasing for Infrastructure Financing by the State Asset Management Agency (LMAN) on Arun Refinery Assets in the Special Economic Zone in Lhokseumawe, Indonesia