Course content

Course content

Total:

30 ECTS

At the School of Governance, Law and Urban Development, you develop into a future‑ready urban designer through a combination of design education, skills‑focused workshops, and real‑life project work. All courses are connected to Urban Development, giving you a strong foundation for understanding how cities and landscapes evolve. In interdisciplinary project teams, you collaborate with students from related fields and work alongside professionals on real assignments in our UrbanLab, where design, creativity, and applied learning come together. You grow into a multidisciplinary urban design professional who can analyse existing urban situations, imagine future possibilities, and connect people and places through thoughtful spatial concepts. By working closely with peers from diverse backgrounds, you learn to think creatively, adapt to a rapidly changing society, and develop new ideas and design solutions for the economic, social, spatial, and sustainability challenges facing tomorrow’s cities.

  • European Policy and Law – 5 EC
    This module explores the politics of the European Union, focusing on its organizational complexity, policymaking processes, legitimacy, democratic challenges, and the role of cities in EU governance. Special attention will be given to the Green Deal. These subjects will provide insight into both the EU’s sustainability ambitions and the governance issues that impact its effectiveness.
     
  • Urban land use and mobility – 5 EC
    This course has the aim to make students familiar with the main urbanisation and mobility vocabulary, planning elements and best practices in Netherlands and around the world and the notice of several scale levels, recent developments and impact on and relationship towards urban planning. The outcome of this unit is that students understand the relation between mobility and urban land use and know the main concepts and models, recent trends & developments.
     
  • Studio 3 Public space – 5 EC
    This design studio focuses on planning and designing public spaces, with special attention to key urban elements such as central malls, city entrances, and the social dynamics of streets, squares, and larger urban systems. Students learn how public spaces can be shaped to be not only functional but also socially engaging and aesthetically meaningful. Each year, the studio explores a current, real-world urban challenge—such as a city entrance—allowing students to develop expertise in the transformation and design of a specific case location, like Deventer (center & periphery).
     
  • Sustainable Living Environment – 5 EC
    In this course students learn how sustainable areas are shaped through system thinking, environmental insights, and process‑oriented approaches. The course emphasizes a water‑ and soil‑led perspective, exploring how water dynamics, soil systems, ecology, and urban microclimates determine what is spatially possible and sustainable. Through (inter)national cases and diverse frameworks, both opportunities and contradictions in sustainable spatial planning will be recognised.
     
  • UrbanLab – 10 EC
    The UrbanLab gives students the opportunity to work on real challenges from professional partners in public administration and spatial development. Through hands‑on, project‑based learning, skills and knowledge will be applied to assignments that deliver tangible value for clients. Each project connects a client, an interdisciplinary project team, and an UrbanLab coach who guides the process from kick‑off to final delivery. Two days a week will be spent on the project developing key professional skills such as collaboration, research, communication, and project management.

  1. Learn in an Interdisciplinary Urban Environment.

  2. Work on real design projects in the UrbanLab with a professional client.

  3. Develop future‑proof spatial solutions.

  4. Strengthen your professional skills.

  5. High quality coaching by team of lecturers.

  6. Experience Urban Design the Dutch way.

  7. Learn from different cultural and professional perspectives.

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