After successfully completing the RePIC programme, you will be well-positioned to start or continue attractive careers in various areas of the public and private sector as well as in university and non-university research.

Creating opportunities to meet with potential employers starts long before graduation and is strongly supported by the manifold opportunities for you to interact with possible employers during each semester.

In addition to the curriculum, you will be regularly invited to research and practically oriented lectures organized at the programme universities and their partners. This establishes an early link with potential employers or placement companies. Examples in Germany are lecture series offered by the University Alliance Ruhr in the field of Metropolitan Studies “Ruhr Lecture”, and GIS related lectures organized by the Interdisciplinary Centre of Geo-Information (IZG) at RUB, in cooperation with the German Cartographic Society (DGfK e.V.)

You will also profit from qualified Career Guidance at each location by the RePIC partners’ career services departments. They provide information about the local and regional job market, offer career guidance and assistance in finding appropriate positions after graduation, and organize job fairs.

More detailed information about career support services can be found in the Student Handbook.

As a RePIC graduate you can find employment in the public sector in areas such as:

• • Public Urban Planning / Quarter Management;
• • Community Development;
• • City administrations;
• • Geospatial Data Analysis and Visualization

There are also opportunities for you as a RePIC graduate at:

• • Governmental organizations at local, national, European, and international level;
• • Social work organizations;
• • Third sector, NGO's engaged in Neighbourhood Development;
• • Foundations and organizations dealing with urban development and transformation;
• • Companies and organisations focused on metropolitan transitions, e.g., in sectors such as energy, data management, mobility, health, housing and education;
• • Consultancies with a focus on Innovation and Change Management;
• • Design agencies/businesses, development agencies, architecture / construction firms;
• • Property developers, consultancies in Architecture and Urban or Regional Planning

Why do employers need graduates of this Master’s now and in the future?

The urban history of our post-industrial cities emanates largely from the processing and manufacturing and in some cases exploitation and exhaustion of resources (natural resources such as soil, water, fossil fuels and minerals as well as human resources) of the industrial sector. This model is now comparatively less important than more dominant economic sectors (especially the service sector), while the industrial sector still accounts for 10-20% of a city’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Re-designing such cities requires an updated look at declining development paths, the set of social, economic, cultural, environmental, and political challenges post-industrial cities are facing at a turning point of their very existence, and potential escape routes from the path of decline.

Post-industrial cities are undergoing tremendous changes of interdependent human and environmental systems: migration, climate change, economic crises, widening gaps between the rich and the poor, pandemics, but also technical breakthrough developments (like artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, "green" energy supply and digitisation in general all challenge the ways cities are organised and people live and work in them.

City governments and private employers need to respond to these challenges with city managers, urban planners, and community designers that integrate different disciplinary perspectives on all governance levels, physical and human capital, economics, health, traffic, climate, migration, and others.

Graduates of the RePIC programme obtain with this unique degree an edge over candidates from traditional or mainstream urban studies or urban planning degree programmes because they have developed a deep and transdisciplinary, thinking outside the box, understanding of topics such as

• • superdiversity in urban contexts;
• • innovation and digitalisation of public administration;
• • open space governance and management;
• • resilient cities;
• • healthy urban planning in European cities;
• • cultural economy, heritage economy and tourism;
• • trends reshaping climate and energy and the European Green Deal;
• • transnational migration, urban social movements and ‘the right to the city’