About the Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning

In its 2007 annual study of the world’s population, the United Nations noted a key turning point in the development of contemporary civilisation: for the first time in human history, the size of the urban population surpassed the size of the rural population. Today, over 50% of the earth’s inhabitants live in cities, and one can say that the world is predominantly urbanized today.

Russia plays one of the leading parts in this process: over 70% of the country’s inhabitants live in cities. Cities today are the focal points in the complex process constituting modern states and the world as a whole. In addition to the opportunities and advantages offered by cities, urban process inevitably becomes a subject-matter for investigation into the new forms of social relations and search for a solution of concrete problems, alike environmental crises, social inequality, human rights violations, abandonment of social guarantees, and everything in between. Cities today are inevitably becoming centres where contemporary global problems are the most apparent and the most addressed.

Today, Russian cities are going through a difficult and often uncontrolled transition process from their Soviet past to a new capitalist form of production. What will be the future of Russian cities in this context? How does the modern city develop and who governs the city? What is a city and what is its role in global economic, political, social, and cultural relations? What is the connection between the social process and the urban space? What are the sustainable urban development strategies, viable mechanisms and methods of planning, regulating, and designing cities? How can one make city governance more effective?

These and many other questions are key themes of a new HSE department – the Graduate School of Urban Studies and Planning and its master’s programme “Urban Development and Spatial Planning”.