Master [Socio-spatial planning] From University of Groningen

The emergence of self-organizing citizen collectives is a critical change in today's society.

Taking this realization as a starting-point, the Master Socio-Spatial Planning helps you to understand the 'human factor' in spatial planning: why different groups of people embrace, contest or reject spatial changes, how they take the lead in shaping their own environment, how spatial interventions influence different stakeholders and how to engage society effectively in spatial transformations.

This master program prepares you for working as a spatial planner (within a governmental arena), a consultant or an advisor, an employee of a non-governmental organization or a researcher, able to intervene in planning processes in a critical, responsive and communicative way, and with an understanding of how:

• Spatial planning issues, choices and interventions are socially constructed and debated.
• The ways that the key actors (civil society, state, market) in planning processes are interdependent and interrelated in planning, dealing with and making sense of spatial transformations.
• To develop and analyze innovative institutional designs and policy solutions for negotiating these actor perceptions and interdependencies within complex spatial changes.

You will work with topics such as housing, mobility, citizenship, well-being and equality in both urban and rural contexts. You will learn to look critically at the role of various stakeholders involved in spatial planning and discover how to interact and build coalitions with them. You will also learn to analyze spatial challenges, formulate interventions and strategies and evaluate the consequences of these strategies for people and their environment.