The LSE Executive MSc in Cities: what we learned from the first ten years

Philipp Rode and Savvas Verdis

When we launched the LSE Executive MSc in Cities (EMC) a decade ago, we were responding to a simple observation: cities were becoming the defining arenas of economic, social, environmental and political change, yet there were remarkably few executive programmes designed specifically for those leading urban transformation.

At the time, executive education was dominated by business degrees, while urban learning opportunities tended to focus on individual sectors such as real estate, planning or infrastructure. Drawing on the research, networks and global experience of the Urban Age programme, an international investigation of the spatial and social dynamics of cities organised by LSE Cities and the Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft, we saw an opportunity to create something different: a degree programme focused on urban leadership that builds a holistic understanding of cities and engages with multi-dimensional evidence.

The idea was tested through a successful executive short course, London and Global Cities, in 2014. Conversations with mayors, city officials, designers, developers, consultants, civic leaders and researchers across the Urban Age network helped shape what became the EMC. Three decisions from that period still define the EMC today. First, a focus on leadership across public, private, and third sectors. Second, teaching the "how" and the "why" of urban change, not just the "what." Third, a decision to organise the entire curriculum around the project cycle: from analysis, to strategy, to delivery. For urban development, place-making, city design, infrastructure, and spatial governance sit at the centre, not the periphery. Appropriately, the programme's core logic was worked out in the open air: in Delhi's Lodhi Garden, in the aftermath of the 2014 Urban Age conference there.

The early years: steep learning curves

The demand exceeded expectations. Early cohorts quickly filled, attracting professionals from across the world. While many initial participants came from design and development backgrounds, the programme gradually broadened to include more public sector leaders, politicians and civic innovators. Scholarships supported by Urban Age Programme and Bloomberg Philanthropies helped ensure diversity in professional backgrounds and geographic representation.

The first years were also a period of intensive learning for us as programme directors. We worked across the LSE, bringing together faculty from sociology, management, geography and environment, government, economics and behavioural sciences. We also invited practitioners from the public, private and third sectors to challenge and enrich our teaching. Together, this created a global faculty and practitioner network spanning the core spectrum of disciplines and expertise needed for integrated urban development: from social inclusion to climate action, from housing to transport and from economic development and finance to urban governance.

Some lessons were more practical. Practice-based cases proved indispensable. Participants consistently valued opportunities to work on real urban challenges alongside organisations such as C40 Cities and the World Bank. We also learned that executive education requires careful balancing of ambition and stamina. Our first cohort famously endured a ‘black’ Tuesday that ran from 08.00 until 19.00, an experience that quickly became part of EMC folklore and a reminder that even the most committed city leaders have limits.

Interest from the US, South America, and South Africa in those early years confirmed something important: this had to be a genuinely global curriculum. Cases from Kampala, Medellín, and Detroit became fixtures of the social and economic courses, not token examples.

A crisis that improved the programme

The Covid-19 pandemic brought perhaps the greatest test and, ultimately, one of our most important sources of innovation. Like many educational institutions, we were forced to rethink how learning happened. What emerged was not simply a temporary adaptation but a lasting transformation.

We learned that online learning should not be viewed as an inferior substitute for face-to-face teaching. Instead, the two formats can complement one another. Content delivery can often happen asynchronously through digital platforms, while live sessions are most valuable when dedicated to discussion, debate, collaboration and peer exchange. Significant investments in hardware, software and teaching design helped us create a blended learning experience that connected participants across continents while maintaining intensive interaction. Many of these innovations and what we coined our hybrid-flex approach remain central to the programme today.

Maturing into uncertainty

The programme has grown up institutionally too, moving from being co-hosted by the Sociology Department to LSE's newly established School of Public Policy as a better long-term fit. The curriculum has matured alongside it. The EMC Lab, a three-month city advisory component led by participants, now centres scenario planning, reflecting a broader acceptance that uncertainty and not stability is the baseline condition for urban leadership. The analytics module has shifted away from traditional cost-benefit evaluation toward multidimensional measures that democratise how value itself gets defined. Both the environment and economic development courses now foreground transitions that are attentive to fairness, territorial and interpersonal inequality.

EMC 10 in Numbers

The programme's impact is clearly reflected in the scale and diversity of its community. What has been most rewarding, however, is seeing what participants do after graduation. Some have run for public office. Others have established consultancies with fellow classmates, become independent advisers, expanded their work internationally or completely reinvented their careers around urban change. Even pursuing a PhD is among the activities that came after. Many participants remain connected through a global network that continues to exchange ideas and collaborate long after formal study ends.

What’s next?

So, what have we learned after ten years and what do we envisage for the next ten years? First, cities demand interdisciplinary thinking. The most effective urban leaders are those who can connect governance, economics, design, infrastructure, environment and society rather than treating them as separate domains. Second, peer learning matters as much as formal teaching. Participants consistently tell us that they learn as much from one another as they do from faculty. Third, uncertainty is becoming the defining condition of urban leadership. Whether responding to climate risks, technological disruption, demographic change or political instability, city leaders increasingly need the capacity to navigate ambiguity rather than simply apply established solutions.

A decade in, the questions are only getting sharper. We are strengthening our offer in city government innovation, urban democracy, health and wellbeing, urban value, AI in urban analytics, housing affordability, agentic and autonomous systems, circular cities, and resilience in the face of risk and emergency. On the teaching side, we are exploring what AI means both for how we teach and how we assess. We're also considering modularisation (certificate, diploma, and MSc pathways) deeper connections to other degrees, and what a genuinely "Global EMC" might look like, with modules potentially running in cities beyond London.

Ten years ago, the EMC was an experiment. Today, it is a global community of urban leaders united by a shared commitment to making cities more equitable, sustainable and effective. If the first decade taught us anything, it is that cities will continue to surprise us. The challenge, and the opportunity, is to keep learning alongside them.

Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy. Savvas Verdis is Senior Lecturer in Practice at LSE Cities. They are the Co-Directors of the LSE Executive MSc in Cities.