Program Overview

Jointly delivered by Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture and the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society at Heriot-Watt University, this programme builds on the historic expertise and knowledge developed in both. It is taught by academic researchers with international research experience, links, and interests in a range of urban-related themes and geographical areas.

This wealth of knowledge and the use of contemporary teaching is integrated into the programme’s delivery. The programme encourages the adoption of a comprehensive approach to the delivery of socially sustainable urban transformation, from local-specific to global-regional interventions.

You will study the wide and diverse range of social, economic and political processes that influence the development of the contemporary urban environment. The programme also enables you to acquire the tools and skills to propose urban projects of diverse scales and specificities.

Students on the programme come from a range of multidisciplinary backgrounds and work collaboratively to understand how urban strategies and urban design approaches respond to contemporary urban transformations. This analysis is framed not only from a western perspective but acknowledges that urban transformations in the urban North are increasingly interlinked with activities in the urban South. Course structure involves traditional lectures, seminars, excursions and other relevant group activities.

The city of Edinburgh offers a unique laboratory for exploration of current urban design issues. Its renaissance to ‘Geddesian’ planning history and more contemporary international planning pedagogy and consultancy links to urban institutions and bodies, particularly in the global South, provides a good platform from which to support student-led, location-based dissertations.

The programme seeks to address the gap between architecturally driven urban design and higher-level, spatial planning driven urban strategies and design, bringing together a range of approaches relevant to urban design that are currently being developed within professional and disciplinary practices, from engineering to human geography.