This master combines both insights from urban management practices all around the world as well as from the newest publications in the field of public administration.
Hugo Hegeman
Alumnus Urban Governance of Inclusive Sustainable Cities
After my bachelor in Public Administration and Organisational Sciences in Utrecht I was looking for a master that focused more on resolving concrete societal issues. In my view, the most urgent societal challenges occur in cities: dealing with climate change, smoothing urban mobility and the digital transformation to smart, inclusive cities. Therefore, I decided to follow the Urban Governance of Inclusive Sustainable Cities master at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
The master started as a collaboration between the Institute of Housing and Development Studies (IHS) and the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences (ESSB) and therefore combines both insights from urban management practices all around the world as well as from the newest publications in the field of public administration. This way, I not only learnt what the dynamics are behind the most important challenges in cities nowadays, but also how to deal with these problems from a governance perspective. During classes, papers and the individual thesis, there is a lot of free space to zoom in on the topics of your interest. This led to the fact that I was able to write on smart city concepts, the use of urban big data and smart mobility practices.
There is also the possibility to follow an internship as part of the final thesis. However, this is something you should pro-actively search for as it is not something that is facilitated by the programme. I personally have been interning at the municipality of Rotterdam in the team ‘the digital city’.
One of the main characteristics of the master is that a lot of the papers and projects are concentrated on group work. Therefore, it is essential that you like to collaborate with others and that you are a team player. In the near future, I see myself working at a major Dutch city to solve urgent societal problems or as a consultant trying to advice cities around the world to foster their urban development. Despite the fact that it was the first year that this masters was up and running and there are still a few kinks that need to be worked out, I would certainly recommend to apply for this master!