IAAC Scholarship Competition 2025-26

MASTER IN ADVANCED URBAN PLANNING & DATA ANALYTICS

"Planning the data-informed city" - In the face of planetary urbanisation, the climate crisis, and the rapid advancement of technology, urban planners and designers have the opportunity to embrace data analytics embedded into urban planning and design to develop more informed strategies. In this context, identify and analyse a social and/or ecological vulnerability of a real city and develop an urban design or technology plan to help empower the local community or environment to mitigate or regenerate itself in the face of this vulnerability.
The proposal should be developed in a real city of your choice, the issue or problematic selected should be relevant to said city, and the data used should be real and its sources stated."

Overview:

The program combines the latest tools for data analysis, computational design, parametric mapping, artificial intelligence (AI) and more, in order to understand, plan and design future-proof urban and peri-urban environments.

Taking place in Barcelona, the capital of urbanism, MUPD shapes multidisciplinary leaders empowered to pioneer the transition of urban environments in the era of big data, combining Data Analytics to Advanced Urban Planning to shape resilient & circular cities, inclusive & just communities and adaptive & more than human urban environments.

The programme is organised into three foundations – Urban Reading, Urban Empowerment and Urban Vulnerabilities, helping students deliver impactful ideas and projects and position themselves in this scenario and articulate a coherent and mature urban discourse. Rooted in the agenda of MUPD is the ambition of reducing the distance between education, research and practice, the program is therefore developed with and supervised by expert faculty and representatives from the professional world – architecture & urban planning and design firms, NGOs and world-class networking organisations – which provide briefs that add a sharp and critical edge to the MUPD’s agenda.

Programme Structure:

The programme’s academic structure is based on IAAC’s innovative, learn-by-doing, and design-through-research methodology which focuses on the development of interdisciplinary skills. During the Master in Advanced Urban Planning & Data Analytics students will have the opportunity to be part of a highly international group, including faculty members, researchers, and lecturers, in which they are encouraged to develop collective decision-making processes and materialize their project ideas.
In this way, IAAC has put together an experimental learning environment that equips professionals with both the theoretical and practical knowledge needed to face the increasing complexity of the contemporary urban environment and to define the future of urbanism.

Students are trained in the latest tools for computational design, urban simulations, data analytics for urban planning and spatial data science. Seminars on programming, big data analytics, parametric mapping and digital cultures equip them with the technical expertise, creative and critical thinking combined with qualitative capacities to design responsive urban environments.

From programme consideration, to the application process, to moving to Barcelona, contact applications@iaac.net.