• An overview of governance, land management, utilities, and other entities that make up urban systems
• Understanding how poverty, health, economic opportunity, and other people-focused issues impact urban systems and development
• How technology is shaping transportation, energy, urban resilience, and more
• Case studies of major cities in the Global North and South

Module 1: The urban opportunity

• The urban opportunity
• Cities: cultural and social transformation
• Challenge of urban politics, planning and governance
• Urban research methods
• Urban theory and history

Module 2: What makes a city function?

• Understanding urban systems
• Municipal, regional and national governance
• Urban utilities
• Urban public finance and taxation
• Law, order and conflict
• Land management and planning
• Lessons from London and Mumbai

Module 3: How can we reduce urban poverty and make cities inclusive and safe?

• What is urban poverty?
• Measuringurban poverty
• Poverty reduction in cities
• Affordable and adequate housing
• Who can deliver the housing we need?
• Safety and violence
• Urban vulnerabilities

Module 4:Making cities productive and reduce inequality

• City production and consumption
• Women in the informal economy
• Migration, mobility and the urban-rural continuum
• Wealth and inequality
• Case: SEWA, India
• Migration and the refugee crisis

Module 5: Improving human development in cities

• Addressing the challenges of urban public health
• Colutions for improving urban health
• Education and skills
• Higher education in cities
• Gender in the city
• Human rights and justice
• Law and equality
• Apartheid in South African cities

Module 6:Providinguniversal urban services and infrastructure

• Sustainable environmental services and infrastructure
• Sustainable transport planning
• ICT
• Sustainable urban energy systems
• Sustainable transport: Bangkok

Module 7: How can cities be resilient?

• Air, water, food and natural resources
• Urban ag for sustainable cities
• Cityrisk exposure
• Climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation
• Building urban resilience
• Environmental planning and the politics of change
• Sustainable environmental practices: Durban
• Urban disaster risk management
• Post-disaster recovery

Module 8: Governing sustainable cities

• SDGs and other global processes
• New institutions and governance
• Public participation and democracy
• Financing sustainable development
• Measuring and monitoring the SDGs
• Opportunities of secondary cities

Module 9: Implementing change

• Makingcities more sustainable
• United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and urban sustainability
• Urban innovation: community-based organisations and civil society (the case of SDI)
• UN-Habitat and international development and financing agencies
• Implementing urban sustainability
• International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) and urban sustainability
• Local leadership: a case study of Melbourne
• International climate action: A case of Chinese cities