ObjectivesFor those seeking a critical understanding of contemporary urbanisation in both developed and developing countries. The programme provides an understanding of contemporary urban issues including regeneration, urban design and sustainability.
Entry requirementspeople with a 2:1 first degree, or overseas equivalent. We will consider a range of degree subjects and welcome the breadth of experience this provides. Part-time students welcome.
Academic titleMA Cities, Culture & Social Change
Course descriptionProgramme description
- Internship opportunity with urban research organisations.
- Opportunities to explore urban issues in comparative perspective.
- Detailed case studies of London.
With an increasing majority of the world's population living in cities, urbanisation is one of the most important social processes today. This programme explores the nature of cities, with all their conflicts, complexity and diversity. With options ranging from an applied, hands on internship to more theoretical module units on 'the city', students can construct their own framework for understanding cities, the processes of urbanisation and their impact on the environment. A major element of the degree is its focus on the policy implications of contemporary urbanisation.
London, with its immense range of research and policy institutes, and its cultural, social & political resources, provides a perfect context for studying this degree. This programme comprises a dissertation, two compulsory modules on Conceptualising Cities and Research Methods in Geography and four optional modules on urban geography (note not all options run each year) chosen from among: Representing the City; Social Change in Global Cities; Sustainable Urbanization; Theory & Methodologies of the Social Sciences; Urban Studies Internship; Urban Regeneration; Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa. You may take a module from other master's degrees in the department and/or from an approved list of modules offered in other departments in the College. You can also select one module of approved language training.
Programme format and assessment
Continuous module assessment. Students must complete a compulsory dissertation and a module on research methods.
Programme modules for MA Cities, Culture & Social Change
Conceptualising Cities (Core Module)
This module is organised around three main themes that have been central to the way that thinkers have conceptualised the city: shape, circulation and crowds. Shape refers to the physical form and layout of the city which together comprise its legibility; circulation refers to the importance of movement, networks and transactional spaces in the city; and the crowd refers to the significance of anonymity and numbers of people in cities. Each of these themes is explored in the context of different theoretical approaches that have been important in the history of urban thought.
PRACTISING SOCIAL RESEARCH I: Understanding the Fundamentals (Core Module)
This module enables students to derive a greater understanding of the relationship between methodology and method and the related notions of epistemology and ontology. The module is a mix of lectures and tutorials and enables students to develop skills in the appropriate use and application of quantitative and qualitative methods, which will have been worked through in tutorial sessions. The module lays the conceptual groundwork for the design of the dissertation and enables students to appreciate the connections between epistemology and the students particular programme of study
(Re)Presenting the City
This module enables students to demonstrate understanding of the concepts of modernity and postmodernity and the theoretical questions raised by the task of representation. To demonstrate cognisance of the similarities and differences between the modern and the postmodern city over time and space.
Agricultural & Environmental Issues in Sub-Saharan Africa
This module enables students to understand the complexities of agriculture in Africas different ecological zones, also have some understanding of how and why images of agriculture vary with the scale of analysis. At a regional/national scale: understand the major influences on the character of agriculture in Africa, in particular the physical environment, historical factors and contemporary attempts to bring about development. At a local scale: be aware of some of the ways in which smallholder farmers, both men and women, interact with the environment in forest, savanna and sahel
Boundaries, Sovereignty & the Territorial State
This module introduces students to the history of politically organised space and the territorial origins and characteristics of the Westphalian state system. It reviews the changing manner in which political geography and geopolitics have covered the questions of international boundaries and state territory over time; from traditional deterministic concerns, through the humanisation of borderland studies to deterritorialisation, reterritorialisation and postmodernity. Students develop a familiarisation with the methods by which territory may be acquired in international law and gain a working knowledge of the principles, problems and practicalities involved in ocean boundary-making. Students are appraised of the various debates existing in political and international studies over the importance of international boundaries and state territory.
Development and Environmentalism in the 'South'
This module examines the way that the environment is understood within the context of development, focusing on the global South. It explores the importance of the environment and natural resources to the development process, and the legacy of colonialism and underdevelopment in framing environmental problems. Finally the module considers recent shifts in the debates surrounding development and the environment initiated under both economic restructuring ( the so-called Washington Consensus) since the 1980s, and the increasing attention to global environmental problems, including biodiversity and climate change.
Environment, Livelihoods and Development in the South
This module starts with a focus on meanings, approaches, and debates resolving around sustainable livelihoods and development from various perspectives. Thematic exemplars will involve in-depth coverage of current issues, such as fair trade, agrarian change, and natural resources management. There will also be focus on discourses of participation and community in development as it pertains to macro- and micro-level implications. This will be linked to broader debates about gendered livelihoods and gender-development debates. The module will involve in-class discussions, based on assigned readings that students are expected to read, as well as documentary analyses linked to the practical coursework assessment
Environmental GIS
This module enables students to capture spatial GIS data from a variety of sources, to assess and manage spatial data quality, to integrate and analyse these data within the latest business and research standard GIS environments. The module focuses particularly on the integrated use of spatial (GIS) data alongside remote sensing technologies and simulation models for better understanding and managing the natural environment. Various aspects of spatial and spatio-temporal analysis are covered and the role of GIS in supporting management decisions is emphasised. Course materials focus on the physical environment and ecological systems but include socio-economic information where necessary.
Environmental Internship
This module enables students to understand the main opportunities and constraints facing the policy-influencing capacities of environmental organisations, through the medium of an internship placement with an NGO. Students gain insights into the workings of environmental organisations and a feel for the day-to-day working practices of environmental activists. While on placement students learn how to collect/process environmental information relevant to the campaigning activities of environmental organisations, and subsequently put together a structured and coherent report reflecting on their practical experience.
Environmental Policy and Politics
This module enables students to understand the main problems and opportunities of environmental actors with regard to environmental policy formulation and implementation. To have an insight into the pertinent debates surrounding the role of different environmental actors in the environmental management process. To understand debates surrounding differences between environmental policy-making in advanced economies and the Third World. To understand why different environmental actors are pursuing different agendas with regard to environmental policy and politics.
Environmental Politics as Cultural Politics
The course allows students to explore the multiple and contested Nature(s) and identify how these contestations are encountered in politics and policy. The significance of everyday practices in shaping cultural understandings of places and their populations are drawn out through both historical and contemporary readings of Nature. These readings are inherently political. Through the analysis of multi-media information including academic texts, policy documentation, art and film, the question of a stable and shared national identity with one type of nature is put under question. Seminar discussions expose to critical examination the interaction between constructions and experiences of different natures and socio-cultural and political structures.
Environmental Remote Sensing
The module enables students to understand the information content of optical, thermal and radar remotely sensed data and to be able to identify the appropriate type of data for use in different environmental investigations. Students will learn to understand and apply various data calibration, processing and analyses techniques to maximize the interpretation of remotely sensed imagery. They will search, order and import various types of remote sensing data into appropriate software packages, and will be able to identify, obtain, calibrate, process and interpret data from sensors such as the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer and/or Landsat Thematic Mapper to illustrate examples of environmental change phenomena.
Environmental research design and application
This module provides a thorough experience in designing environmental investigations to be carried out through a combination of simulation modeling, environmental monitoring, laboratory experiments and/or statistical analysis. It consists of a practical research project with individual supervision to put the issues learnt in Methods for Environmental Research into practice. On completion of the module, students will be able to design strategies for collection of data, use advanced data analysis techniques, and present the results of investigations both orally and in written form, and thus be capable of carrying out independent research in related issues. In this way, the student will be prepared to carry out a detailed individual study in the dissertation component of the MSc module. In combination with the dissertation, the module unit enables the student to go on to carry out further research, whether this be at PhD level, or within a research institute where applied research into environmental problems is carried out
Geopolitics of Natural Resource Disputes
This module enables students develop a critical awareness of how the presence (real or rumoured) of natural resources may affect the alignment and alter the status of international boundaries on land and sea. Develop an appreciation of the issues involved in the conduct and management of international river disputes (both successive and divided international rivers). Review the manner in which the presence and location of hydrocarbons have affected the drawing of land and maritime boundaries and promoted the outbreak and resolution of associated disputes. Unravel the complexities of current resource and territorial disputes in the Caspian Sea, Gulf of Guinea, Persian Gulf and South China Sea. Promote an awareness of the range of international disputes in existence over the resources of the sea (primarily fishing and other environmental issues)
Health, Lifestyles and Cities
This modules examines the theoretical debates concerning the study of health within geography and the inter-relationships between health and the built form of cities. It critically assesses current public health policies and the practices involved in governing unhealthy lifestyles. It evaluates how spatial and social differences between and within cities condition the problematisation of lifestyles. This module enables students to acquire an understanding of the incorporation of health within the remit of an increasing array of governmental and non-governmental actors.
Methods for environmental research
This module aims to provide a background in issues and methods involved in doing environmental research, including research methods and design. To achieve this, the module consists of a series of lectures, seminars, and practicals giving an overview of methods in designing, analyzing, presenting and evaluating environmental research. A subcomponent of this module will be an additional unassessed but required set of practicals and seminars giving a overview of laboratory and field equipment available in the KCL Department of Geography. On completion of this module, the student will be able to define the features of environmental problems and will be able to assess environmental investigations in terms of their design strategies for collection of data, data analysis, and results presentation. When taken with SG/5111 the students will be fully equipped to carry out their own independent research into environmental problems using these methodologies.
Modelling Environmental Change at the Land Surface
Through seminars and hands on experience, this module enables students to develop a research-level understanding of environmental modelling applications and limitations. Students will gain the ability to build, develop and apply a wide-range of modelling solutions to environmental problems. Students will also be able to critically assess research involving models and the application of models.
Monitoring Environmental Change
This module introduces students to the details and practicalities of environmental monitoring, using a variety of methodologies and measurement techniques, specifically using electronic-based sensors and instrumentation. Students acquire the skills to manipulate raw field, laboratory and logged data for analysis, to monitor, measure and analyse data on environmental stores and fluxes, and to interpret, analyse and present field and laboratory data clearly in written reports in order to explain processes operating in the environmental system under investigation. Students will also gain experience to design field or laboratory based research projects to monitor environmental systems, making use of appropriate field, laboratory and measurement equipment. Field monitoring methods are taught in the context of atmospheric environments, catchment monitoring, fluvial systems, hydrological processes, complemented with a practical fieldwork exercise.
Social Change in Global Cities
This module explores the nature, forms and processes of social change in global cities. It examines the socio-economic changes which are reshaping global cities, linking these to a series of other changes including migration, occupational structure, income, ethnicity, the structure of the housing market and social segregation.
Southern Africa: The Political Ecology of Land and Agriculture
The module enables students to adopt a critical approach to the relationships between the environment, agricultural production and change and political ecology in southern Africa. It covers the agricultural and environmental characteristics of the southern African region, including both the small-scale and large-scale agricultural sectors, and the discourses and debates about how these should be interpreted and analysed. It provides a strong appreciation of how structural factors such as land alienation and migrancy influence contemporary agricultural performance, and the significance of indigenous knowledge and the limitations of technocratic solutions. The module also addresses critically the philosophy behind, and empirical outcomes of, CBNRM approaches in a region rich in wildlife and national parks.
Sustainable Urbanisation
The module examines the influence of historical urbanisation paths as constraining factors on the production of geographies of urban environmental risk and security. Theorise the relationships between social structures and human agency in negotiating the distribution of risk and vulnerability in the city. Examine the utility of environmental risk as a lens for viewing crises of urban development. Through grounded case study analysis to identify the complexity of living in places of urban risk and vulnerability, to unpack the interaction of urban livelihood sustainability with vulnerability and the tensions that come from the demands of living in poverty and with vulnerability.
Techniques for Managing Environmental Change at the Earth's surface
The module enables students to have contact and presentations from a number of personnel directly involved in environmental management in the commercial world. It gives students an understanding of the interdisciplinary processes involved in environmental management, enabling students to design management solutions to a number of environmental problems. It enables students to present the results of an environmental management investigation both orally and in a written report.
Territorial and Boundary Dispute Resolution
This module introduces students to contemporary and historical mechanisms for boundary territorial dispute resolution. Provide a practical understanding of the manner in which the World Courts gain jurisdiction to try territorial/boundary disputes and of the manner by which they have resolved them to date. Facilitate an appreciation of the range of underlying issues that characterise contemporary individual territorial disputes, from complex issues of decolonisation, through partition and secession to attempted annexation. Review in detail recent cases of international boundary settlement on land and sea, reached through remodule to bilateral negotiations, arbitration or judicial settlement and appreciate the arguments, principles and evidentiary issues that prevailed. Provide a basic familiarity with the types of primary evidence used in boundary territorial settlement before the international courts, typically documentary and cartographic materials held in the major London repositories.
The Latin American Colonial Experience
The module enables students to acquire a thorough grounding in the historical geography of colonial Latin America sufficient for independent research and to gain a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of economic, social and demographic processes associated with colonial rule. It places particular emphasis on the impact of colonial rule on indigenous societies.
Theory and Methodologies of the Social Sciences
Through seminar discussions, students will consider a range of philosophical approaches to the social sciences, from positivism and empiricism, to hermenuetics, marxism, and post-structuralism, and discuss the relationship between theoretical debates in particular disciplines to those within the wider social sciences. Each seminar will begin with student-led discussion of readings and then end with a more formal presentation from the instructor to introduce the material for the coming week.
Tourism and Development
After charting the growth and development of tourism at a global level and also within countries of the South, the module adopts an analytical approach, examining the impact of power relations and risk on tourism development at different scales in developing countries. It examines the different roles played by different interest groups in the industry and the inter-relationship between these groups. It analyses the advantages and disadvantages of tourism on economies of the South and examines possible ways of bringing theory and practice in tourism together in the pursuit of socio-economic development.
Urban Regeneration
The module reviews the experience of urban regeneration in the context of post second world war urban policy and developments. This is done mainly from a British perspective but North American and European examples are drawn up and it is hoped that Professor Bob Beauregard who is a leading North American urban scholar and a visiting professor will lead one session. The first part of the module discusses the experience of urban decline and resurgence over the last half century. In the second half we look at a number of specific issues including the conflict between the concepts regeneration and gentrification, the role of culture and in particular focus on the regeneration of East London and the role of the Olympic Games. In the final week, there is an East London fieldtrip which includes a visit to the Olympic site (subject to continuing access being granted).
Urban Studies Internship
This practical module will provide masters students with hands on experience working with selected urban research organisations (e.g. national and local government departments, museums, urban think tanks) involved in urban-based research, policy formulation and implementation in a major city (normally expected to be London). The module will enable students to ground theoretical and conceptual issues relating to urban research in a practical setting.
Urbanisation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Livelihoods and Patterns of Growth
This module enables students to evaluate the way in which globalization (in the form mainly of structural adjustment programmes) has influenced African cities and contemporary livelihoods and economic strategies (employment, incomes, food and shelter) for the majority of Africa's urban population, the urban poor. Assessing urban growth patterns in this region and its periodization and the changing nature of rural-urban migration and linkages over time. The constraints on planning and servicing imposed by extreme resource constraints and the privatization encouraged by structural adjustment are evaluated. The module also explores the specificities of the urban experience in southern African countries with their legacies of institutionalised and racially-based influx control.
Water Resources and Water Policy
This module provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the recent history of water resource allocation and management especially in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Priority will be given to outlining a conceptual framework identifying the relevant underlying ecological, economic and sociological principles relevant in the evaluation and management of water resources. The conceptual framework will also show the link between these underlying principles and environmental and economic policies. The roles of the institutions and technologies through which such policies can be implemented will also be analysed and exemplified.