BA Urban Studies
- Leiden, Netherlands
- The Hague, Netherlands
BA
DURATION
3 years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
01 Apr 2027*
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2027
TUITION FEES
EUR 14,700 / per year **
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* Apply by 1 April 2027 (non-EU/EEA students) or 15 June 2027 (EU/EEA students).
** Dutch, EU/EEA, Swiss and Surinamese students: EUR 2,771 per year (2027/2028).
Key Summary
About: This English-taught BA Urban Studies at Leiden University covers cities and challenges like climate, inequality, safety and health. You learn urban theory, multidisciplinary methods and do fieldwork. Year two you pick a specialisation (sustainable, multicultural, safe, healthy city). Year three offers internship, study abroad or minor, and ends with a practical problem-solving course plus a thesis.
Career Outcomes: You’ll gain independent thinking, teamwork, spatial analysis, statistics, research design and writing for audiences. The programme gives career guidance and practitioner guest lectures. Graduates enter academia, public sector, private sector or take roles such as urban planner, policy advisor, researcher, consultant.
Do cities fascinate you? Would you like to gain insights into the nature and origin of problems and learn more about, and help solve, cities' health, safety, multicultural and sustainability issues?
Are you unfazed by statistics and economics and excited at the prospect of following an international, English-taught programme? If all these questions elicited a “yes”, then our Urban Studies bachelor's is definitely for you.
Currently, around 50% of the world's population lives in cities and knows all about the opposing aspects of urban life. In the Urban Studies programme you will learn how cities are currently coping with economic growth, social cohesion, safety and sustainability, and how they'll do so in future. And all this in an international classroom in the Netherlands' political capital, The Hague.
What you will learn
Labour market surveys show an increasing demand for graduates in the field of Urban Studies. Particularly those graduates who have been trained in a broad programme with social and cultural perspectives on cities and urbanisation processes are sought after by employers. As a graduate of our programme, you will be equipped with knowledge and valuable skills such as:
- independent thinking;
- communication;
- working in teams;
- analysing and using information fromvarious sources;
- methodology, such as understanding andusing statistics and spatial analysis (GIS);
- designing research programmes that relateto urban problems and their solutions.
A selection of the jobs in which Urban Studies-related knowledge and skills are relevant:
- policy advisor for urban issues at a local government or consultancy firm;
- crime specialist at a local government;
- strategic research officer for sustainability at the central government or an NGO;
- researcher of health-related urban issues at a university.
How you will learn
As an Urban Studies student, expect to put in a full working week of about 40 hours. An average of 14 of these will be spent in lectures and tutorials, with the rest taken up by independent study. Lectures will focus on specific topics and be broken down into work groups of 20 students. This makes it possible to discuss the material in greater depth, allowing for more student input, using individual or group presentations, for example.
Career prospects
Job market surveys have highlighted an increasing demand for students in the field of urban studies, particularly those who have been trained in an interdisciplinary programme that includes social and cultural perspective on cities and urbanisation processes.
After graduating as an urban specialist you will acquire invaluable skills that can be applied in private, public and non-profit sectors alike. These skills include critical thinking, communication, data collection and analysis, methodology, and designing research programmes that relate to urban problems and their solutions.
You could, for example, work for a consultancy firm as a policy advisor for urban issues or as a financial crime specialist with local government. Alternatively, you could be a strategic researcher in sustainability with central government or a researcher of medical urban issues with a university.
The Urban Studies bachelor’s programme is based on two learning trajectories. One is dedicated to knowledge related to urban issues, while the other focuses on a wide range of practical and academic skills.
Year 1
Cultural Diversity in Urban Contexts
The population of any city does not consist of one single group of people. It consists of many different groups that are distinguished by e.g. socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds, language, age, sex. Naturally, this superdiversity has an effect on life in the city, in many of its aspects. This course gives an overview of issues related to cultural diversity in the city. You will study this topic from comparative, historical and sociolinguistic perspectives. Among other things, you will learn to identify the key role that culture plays and how cultural and linguistic diversity affects societies at local, national and international level.
The Material City
This is the age of climate change, which has an effect on all of us and which also has an impact on cities. In this course you will focus on several sustainability issues. Tomorrow’s cities will increasingly need to reuse and recycle materials and be much more self-sufficient when it comes to the supply of energy and water. You will learn how to identify and describe aspects that include the main material elements of cities and cities’ environmental impact.
Year 2
In year two you will deepen your knowledge by following lectures in the programme’s four themes: the sustainable city, the multicultural city, the safe city and the healthy city. Courses on all themes include individual and group assignments, where you gain hands-on experience of the issues involved. In two of the four themes you will take elective courses to deepen your understanding of these themes.
The Sustainable City
While their high population density make cities major users of resources, it also creates opportunities for innovation in sustainability. This theme focuses on the importance of sustainability, cities’ role in the circular economy, policies to fight urban pollution and waste, and the cultural and ecological changes taking place at urban level.
The Multicultural City
This theme investigates differences in culture, language, citizenship, religion, ethnicity, class, wealth and gender. It discusses how multicultural, multilingual cities like Rabat, Singapore, and Montreal develop, how they deal with their diversity, and how this affects the ways that people interact with one another.
The Safe City
This theme shows how cities can be both dangerous and safe at the same time. Highlighting contemporary debates about violence and crime, it covers a wide range of topics. Some of these are city governance, the police, street gangs, the rise of transnational crime and how crime is portrayed in art, culture and the media.
The Healthy City
The negative aspects of urbanisation, such as slums, poor sanitation and air pollution do not automatically translate into poorer health. Densely populated cities, for example, often offer the most accessible healthcare. This theme will help you understand relevant concepts and debates about urban wellbeing, welfare and health.
Year 3
The first semester of the third year offers you the flexibility to pursue your interests. You can either follow electives or a minor from another programme, do an internship in the Netherlands or abroad, or study abroad at a university in our network. Our Career Service can support you in finding a position as an intern.
Our Outbound Student Coordinators can help you find the best option for you if you wish to study abroad. Leiden University has an extensive network, offering you a lot of opportunities!
In the second semester, you will follow a Literature Seminar. In Urban Studies in Practice you will work on a real-life-challenge and to conclude the programme, you will do research and write an interdisciplinary thesis on one of the themes you have specialised in. Examples of recent thesis titles are:
The sustainable city:
- ‘Inclusive climate resilience in the city of The Hague’
- ‘Role of income and ethnicity in urban green space accessibility: a qualitative case study of Moroccan and Turkish communities in The Hague’
- ‘The influence of environmental education on sustainable behavior: a recommendation for Dutch schools’
The safe city:
- ‘Social effects of community urbanism: A practical Approach to evaluating community gardens’
- ‘French Far-Right Candidates and Their Negative Image of the City’
- ‘Planned vs. Lived: An Analysis of the Planning Practices and Relations of Power Involved in Addis Ababa’s Integrated Housing Development Programme’
The multicultural city:
- ‘Black Feminist Practices of Community Building as Reclamation of the Right to New Orleans Post-Katrina’
- ‘Regional identity beyond the national among Maghrebi immigrants: How football and demographics have shaped identity in Marseille in opposition to the French national identity’
- ‘Residential and Socio-Spatial Segregation in Global Metropolises: Lessons on Multiculturalism from Vienna and New York’
The healthy city:
- ‘Elderly in the Car-Free City: Relation between Mobility, Stress and developments towards the Car-Free Model’
- ‘Stress and Social Quality in the Urban Environment’
Leiden University has a number of scholarship programmes for international students. There are also a range of scholarships offered by Dutch governmental and EU organisations.
After graduating from the Urban Studies programme you will have acquired invaluable skills that are sought after by employers looking for new staff and by universities selecting candidates for master’s programmes. These skills include:
- Independent thinking
- Writing texts for specific audiences
- Working in teams
- Analysis of spatial environment
- Analysing information
- Methodology, such as understanding and using statistics
- Designing research programmes that relate to urban problems and their solutions
- Orient yourself on the labour market
During various moments in the Urban Studies programme, you will be given insights into the career options open to you after graduating and the steps you can take during your studies to achieve your career goals. The programme includes, for example, the course “Professional Orientation”, which will be offered in the second year.
Also, you will meet with various professionals working in relevant sectors during the course of the programme, which will give you additional opportunities for career orientation. The Urban Studies programme has excellent connections with organisations working on urban challenges. This means that you will have first-hand information about current issues as well as related career opportunities from academic experts and practitioners in guest lectures.
Is Urban Studies the program for you?
- Do you want to study urban challenges from multiple angles, looking beyond Urban Planning?
- Do cities fascinate you?
- Do you want to have the opportunity to make a real change?
- Do you thrive in an international environment?
- Do you want to be challenged into out-of-the-box, creative thinking?
- Are you interested in looking at cities from many different perspectives?
- Do you enjoy learning about urban history, psychology, biology, statistics, and much more?