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Urban Planning and Management

Become a high-skilled geospatial professional

Learn to understand complex urban processes and develop scalable sustainable strategies to make cities inclusive, competitive, compact, and resilient.

How to transform cities into healthier, more sustainable, inclusive, and attractive places where people and nature can thrive? What can be changed in transport, infrastructures, climate change adaptation, and disaster preparedness to improve local residents’ quality of life, promote innovation, and reduce environmental impacts? In the specialisation in Urban Planning and Management, you will learn to apply GIS-based and statistical methods to develop new sustainable strategies for problems such as urban sprawl, inefficient use of land that causes housing shortage, increasing overcrowding, the strain on energy and water resources, inefficient transport systems, and lack of access to economic opportunities.

dr Javier Martinez, Associate Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management

You will learn to make cities more inclusive, safer, resilient, and sustainable by, for example, mapping and identifying deprived neighbourhoods or slums and assessing the impact of new forms of residential development, such as gated communities, on urban dwellers’ lives.

dr Javier Martinez, Associate Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management

Master's Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation

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What is Urban Planning and Management?

The magnitude and dynamics of urbanisation all over the world place an enormous burden on city authorities, planners, and other stakeholders responsible for the planning and management of urban regions. You can play a vital role in developing effective interventions contributing to sustainable urban development. For example, how can you ensure all urban residents have access to clean water supplies and good drainage systems? How can you accurately map the boundaries of slums? What about developing a planning support tool for bicycle-friendly urban areas? How can you support cities to better prepare and respond to natural hazards? In the Specialisation in Urban Planning and Management, you will investigate these and similar cases and develop relevant sustainable solutions by applying geo-information science and technologies.

Examples of courses you will follow during this specialisation:
  • Cities reveal inequalities. Considerable parts of the world’s urban population are poor, whereas others are affluent. In the course Building Inclusive and Competitive Cities, you will apply spatial and non-spatial indicators to assess intra-urban socio-spatial patterns such as quality of life conditions and access to urban services.
  • In the course The Compact City, you will look at the most important theoretical concepts that describe the relation between land use and transportation, use a variety of modelling tools and techniques to analyse and understand this relation, and come up with better spatial planning policies.
  • Urban areas and their populations are often seriously affected by natural hazards and are prone to climate change. In the course Risk-Sensitive Urban Planning Studio, you will learn to apply GIS-based methods to conduct urban risk and vulnerability assessments and design suitable planning interventions.

In our Design and Interactive Space for Co-Creating (The DISC), you will gain hands-on experience and develop strategies and interventions for real urban problems. Do you want to investigate what urban areas are vulnerable to natural hazards and how the vulnerability affects different socio-economic groups? Or what about analysing accessibility to urban green spaces, community services, or schools? You might also map pollution risk in a neighbourhood in India. There is a great variety of challenges you will learn to solve!

GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management: A Global Perspective

Do you want a sneak peek at what you will be learning in the specialisation? Alumni and staff have worked together and published an open-access book and a dedicated website with free education materials that illustrate the use of geo-information in the planning and management of urban regions. You will learn about sustainable urban development, urban planning shaping our cities, and the increasing threat of natural hazards to urban dwellers. Take a look at the Book or Website

What will you learn?

As a graduate of the Master's in Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation with a specialisation in Urban Planning and Management, you have acquired specific scientific knowledge, skills, and values that will help you in your future career.

Knowledge

After completing this Master’s specialisation, you:

Skills

After successfully finishing this Master’s specialisation, you:

Values

After completing this Master’s specialisation, you:

Other masters and specialisations 

Is this specialisation not exactly what you are looking for? Maybe one of the other specialisations suits you better. You can also find out more about related Master’s at the University of Twente: