Dana Pokojna – All students of the Urban Studies program have found themselves asking this this question at some point in their academic career. In this article I want to introduce a minor at University van Amsterdam that I follow, and which allows me to go apply my Urban Studies knowledge beyond a city scale and onto a global scale.

The International Development Studies (IDS) minor is an interdisciplinary program offered at UvA and focuses on global challenges of the contemporary world such as poverty, inequality, and sustainable development. I wanted to shed light onto this minor to show that Urban Studies really is the interdisciplinary program that it says to be.

The structure of the minor is as follows: One compulsory course named International Development Studies which acts as a general introduction to the course. The material covers the post-war era geographical restructuring, prominent economic theories that have the spotlight at this time, and the international development agenda and major actors leading such projects.

One must also follow There are three choices of a disciplinary elective one can follow. These are Political Geography, Introduction to Conflict Studies, and Geographies of Inequality, the latter I chose to follow myself. This course mainly focuses on socio-spatial inequalities. Precisely, how and where are inequalities manifested in globalisation as the world, places and people become increasingly more interconnected. Lastly, the minor requires everyone to take one of two choices of an international development electives; Environment & International Sustainable Development, or Education & International Development. I chose to follow the former due to my interest in environmentalism and access to natural resources. In this course, the topics of human-nature relationships, inequalities in policies regarding ecology and global/regional/local adaptation to climate change are addressed.

The IDS minor is a one-year minor and totals to 30 ECT after completion. The reason I chose to follow this program as opposed to other minors is because of my interest in contemporary global challenges, and how they are addressed not only on local but at international scales. What I deem important to note is that the minor’s academic material is greatly related to the topics of politics, and prior knowledge about political geography is welcomed. However, it not necessary to follow the courses nor is a requirement to apply for the minor. Additionally, UvA also allows a follow up Master’s program, as well as a Research Master’s program also named International Development Studies. These acts as great opportunities to follow up on learning more about these themes that the minor covers.

A parallel that can be drawn between the Urban Studies program and the IDS minor is that they both allow for gaining in-depth insight into thematic subjects. While Urban Studies is majorly focused on the urban, it does provide students with the basic knowledge in four themes of the city which are; Healthy City, Sustainable City, Multicultural City and Safe City. As for the IDS minor, it can be seen from the choices of electives that one can follow courses with specific focus on certain themes. Education, conflict, inequality, health and migration are all addressed in this course, all intertwined with the theme of development, and observed through a political perspective that determines how the world works in the contemporary times.