Announcement: Name change for GETEC Master's programme

We are pleased to announce that, effective September 2024, GETEC Master's (Governing Ecological Transitions in European Cities) has been renamed GETIC (Governing Ecological Transition in Cities).  

Read below a word from Giacomo Parrinello, Academic Director of the Master: 

The world keeps changing, sometimes too fast, sometimes not enough... But one of the things we are most proud of here at the Urban School, is our ability to contribute to shape that change and, when it’s needed, to change ourselves.

This is one of these times. When we created the master Governing Ecological Transitions in European Cities, we wanted to build a curriculum capable of meeting the greatest challenge of our century: to make our cities and regions part of the solution to the climate and ecological crisis.

We thought that cities and regions needed a new generation of professionals and civil servants, one that understands cities and regions on new terms. A generation that understands that cities are not just human habitats but also complex ecological systems. A generation that understands that governing the ecological transition of cities and regions entails to attend simultaneously to the way people live and produce, the infrastructure that makes this possible, and the wider web of life in which they are embedded.

For that purpose, we have built a curriculum which combines the best of the urban social sciences with the best of the sciences of the urban environment. A curriculum which brings together innovative research and hands-on methodological skills.  A curriculum which trains our students to real-world challenges in real-world situations, under the guidance of experienced academics and professionals.

Our commitment and beliefs remain the same and so the content and quality of our curriculum, but the name of our master changes. From now on, it will become GETIC, Governing Ecological Transitions in Cities.

Europe remains at the core of our training, but no longer confines it. The challenges that European cities and regions face today are not so different from those of cities and regions in other parts of the world that have benefitted from two centuries of growth and prosperity, and must now bifurcate to an entirely different way of functioning. We think that the knowledge and skills that our curriculum offers are capable of meeting these challenges beyond Europe, and they must do so. The careers of our alumni, which increasingly span North America as much as Europe, prove it.

GETIC does not change the content and quality of our curriculum. It changes its ambitions. At the Urban School we think that our world requires nothing less. 

Giacomo Parrinello, Academic Director of GETIC Master's programme