Independent School for the City jobs and careers

About Independent School for the City

The Independent School for the City is a playground for all urban thinkers, do-ers and designers – based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It brings together critical and experimental ideas in the field of urban research, design, strategy and activism. Through a wide range of activities, it provides a platform where urban professionals can meet, informally discuss, and work on the challenges facing modern cities. The School works from the belief that urban challenges that are often viewed separately and from different disciplinary perspectives (climate change, migration, affordable housing and inequality) have become inextricably linked in recent years. We believe that our cities must not only be redesigned, but also rethought. When dealing with today's city, we can no longer afford to separate the conceptual from the practical, the political from the technical, form from content. The Independent school therefore aims to be a platform for "urbanism" that embraces design, sociology, economics, history and anthropology; anything that helps to understand and make our cities better. The School offers a variety of activities that encourages the exchange between different disciplines, ranging from lecture evenings and one-day workshops, to seminars and an intensive 12-week programme on contemporary urbanism. Our approach is always open-minded but critical, inclusive but discerning, flexible but precise. This offers the participants in our activities and their international team of teachers the full intellectual freedom to research the city in the broadest sense.