IHS - making cities work!

Find out more about our Masters:

Find out more about our PhD programme:

Find out more about our short courses:

Cities are in a state of unprecedented change. Nowadays, the majority of the population is concentrated in cities and by 2030, urban areas are expected to triple in surface. AS urban specialists, we understand that cities are the economic engines of the world fostering business opportunities, outstanding technological developments, cultural transformations and social community led innovations.
In the midst of urbanization processes, IHs supports people working on urban challenges to find leverage points for sustainable urban future and improvement of urban quality of life.
At IHS we champion this cause by providing capacity building, advisory research and training services focusing in low, middle-income and emerging economies. We offer several international degree programs on urban themes as part of the high-ranking Erasmus University.
Proudly located in Rotterdam, recognized worldwide as a vibrant city of urban vision, IHS was part of a passion team that led down the foundation of this unique renewed place after war. Since then, together with our large network of partners in over 8,500 alumni worldwide, we’ve been continuing our mission of city changers in the heart of urban development.
“When you work in a real context like we do in Rotterdam, you can feel and really experience that people have different conflicting needs and this is really what makes this education so interesting.” Saskia Rujsink Urban experts from IHS travel across the globe providing advisory services to local and regional government facilitating capacity-building and growth. This expertise is filled by research and many inputs from the field feed into the educational programs we offer. “Our alumni come from 140 countries and have very diverse backgrounds such as architects, engineers, economists, urban planners, civil servants and so on. Their activities are living testimonies of what IHS stands for.” Charmae Nercua-Wissink.
“We all have a background of being involved in projects, in advisory services, in having worked in developing country context that we apply in the class and we use for also direct references.” Alexander Jachnow. At IHS we focus on urban management, governance and policy instruments across several themes: Urban spatial planning, affordable housing resettlement, urban competitiveness and resilience, environmental and climate change management, land-use planning, infrastructure and service provision.