Sustainable Cities

Course detail Description

Our Sustainable Cities MA, MSc course will give you advanced understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities, with a specific focus on the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies and environments.

We aim to:

• Develop your critical understanding of the interrelationships between urbanization and human lifestyles, politics, economy, ecology and environment.
• Develop your critical understanding of human impacts on physical processes in cities, and the implications for habitation and liveability.
• Develop your ability to evaluate advanced scholarship in the field of urban policy critically, with reference to sustainable cities.
• Promote initiative and develop your independent critical judgment in identifying, analysing and solving problems at an advanced level.
• Develop your relevant transferable skills which are embedded in our learning and assessment schemes.
• Develop your practical skills in data handling, interpretation and use, and develop your skills in connecting physical dynamics to social, political and management processes.
• Enable you to focus on the challenges of managing cities in an integrated and sustainable manner, regardless of your first degree discipline.
• Enable you to deploy scientific, social and economic theory within a sustainability framework which takes into account the need to address the needs of society, the economy and the protection of environmental resources.

The course combines pure and applied research methods from human and physical geography, giving you an advanced level understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities. We focus on the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies, environments and social processes.

The degree combines pure and applied research methods from human and physical geography leading to an advanced level understanding of contemporary debates about sustainable cities. Specific foci will be the human and physical processes shaping urban ecologies, environments and social structure and process.

Teaching

We will teach you through a combination of lectures and seminars, normally for 20 hours for a 20-credit module. In addition we expect you to complete 180 hours of independent study per module. For your 12,000 word dissertation, we will provide four workshops and five hours of one-to-one supervision to complement your 587 hours of independent study.

Typically, one credit equates to 10 hours of work.

Assessment

Performance on taught modules in the Geography Department is normally assessed through essays and other written assignments, oral presentations, lab work and occasionally by examination, depending on the modules selected. All students also undertake a research-based dissertation of 12,000 words.

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Structure

Year 1

Courses are divided into modules.You will normally take:

• MSc – modules totalling 180 credits
• MA – modules totalling 180 credits

If you are a part-time student, your course will take two years to complete. You will take a combination of required and optional modules over this period of time with the dissertation in your second year.

King’s College London reviews the modules offered on a regular basis to provide up-to-date, innovative and relevant programmes of study. Therefore, modules offered may change. We suggest you keep an eye on this course page for updates.

Whether you are an MA or MSc student, you are required to take:

• Understanding the Sustainable City (20 credits)
• Governing the Sustainable City (20 credits)
• Dissertation in Sustainable Cities (60 credits)

MSc students are also required to take one module from the following modules:

• Practising Social Research (20 credits)
• Methods for Environmental Research (20 credits)

In addition, MSc students are required to take one module from the following modules:

• Understanding & Managing Urban Aquatic and Terrestrial Systems (20 credits)
• Advanced Quantitative & Spatial Methods in Human Geography (20 credits)

MA students are also required to take:

• Practising Social Research (20 credits)

If you are an MA student, you will take 40 credits (normally two modules) from a range of optional modules that may typically include:

• Environmental Internship (20 credits)
• Environmental Actors and Politics (20 credits)
• Environment, Livelihoods & Development in the ‘South’ (20 credits)
• Globalisation & the Environment (40 credits)
• Disasters & Development (20 credits)
• Health, Lifestyles & Cities (20 credits)
• Environmental Science & Policymaking (20 credits)
• Community, Vulnerability & Disaster Risk (20 credits) (prerequisite: Disasters & Development either through taking the module for credit or through auditing)
• Climate Change & Culture (20 credits)
• The Right to the City (20 credits)
• A Practical & Theoretical Evaluation of Sustainable Development (20 credits) by arrangement with the Department of International Development.

Whether you are an MA or MSc student, you will then select modules from the following options:

• Any Level 7 (Master’s) module offered by the Department of Geography, including those listed above.
• Up to 20 credits from Level 7 (Master’s)modules offered across the university, subject to approvals.