MSc City Design and Social Science

About the MSc programme

Applicants come from a range of disciplinary and professional backgrounds, reflecting the range of skills involved in urban policy, design and development. Candidates should have a good first degree, or equivalent professional qualifications in any relevant field of architecture, urban design, planning, engineering, social science, law and humanities, management, mathematics, statistics or natural science. Relevant professional and voluntary experience will also be taken fully into account. Each year, around 40 per cent of our student intake comes from architecture, design or engineering, with around 60 per cent coming from a range of backgrounds in social, economic and management science, law, humanities and the natural sciences.

The MSc programme studies the relations between the physical and social organisation of cities and urban space. We see design as a mode of research and practice that shapes urban environments, responds to urban problems, and connects social, spatial and material forms in the city. This programme, launched in 1998, aims to promote a new generation of interdisciplinary professionals who engage with the city in a holistic manner and have a positive impact on the making of cities and the built environment. Graduates will be able to integrate their skills with the other professions involved in the design, development and implementation of urban projects both within the private and public sector.

Graduates from the programme find international career opportunities across a range of urban design, planning and development fields in the public, private and community sectors. 

The programme combines intensive design research on urban themes in a studio workshop with taught courses on core topics and options from a range of relevant subjects taught across the School, together with an independent design project or research dissertation in the third term, and an international field-trip to support and extend the students' project work.

PhD students in the Cities Programme engage formally - through teaching and reviews - and informally with the MSc students. Guest lectures, expert seminars and masterclasses on key urban issues complement the programme, and students are linked with the other urban teaching programmes at LSE.

Compulsory courses

(* half unit)

• City Design Research Studio
• Cities by Design* 
• City-making: the Politics of Urban Form*
• Independent Project

Options

Choose a total of one full unit:

• The Economics of Urban and Regional Planning*
• Economics of Local and Regional Development*
• Contemporary Urbanism 
• Globalisation and Regional Development* 
• Planning for Sustainable Cities*
• Economic Appraisal and Valuation*
• Social Exclusion, Inequality and the 'Underclass' Debate*
• Social and Political Aspects of Regional and Urban Planning* 
• International Housing and Human Settlements*
• Housing, Neighbourhoods and Communities*
• Environmental Assessment*
• Cities and Social Change in East Asia* 
• Cities, Politics and Citizenship*
• Cities, People and Poverty in the South*
• Urban Environment*
• The Urban Revolution*

Not all these options may be available each year, and students may take alternative option courses at the discretion of the programme director.