The Bristol Green Capital Partnership: An exemplar of reflexive governance for sustainable urban development?

The theory of ‘reflexive governance’ prioritises process over outcomes and advocates participatory procedures, valorising multiple sources of knowledge, mutual learning and continuous evolution of organisational forms. Through the lens of reflexive governance, we explore the evolution of Bristol Green Capital Partnership, which, since 2008, has...

The SPPD-WRF framework: A novel and holistic methodology for strategical planning and process design of water resource factories

This paper guides decision making in more sustainable urban water management practices that feed into a circular economy by presenting a novel framework for conceptually designing and strategically planning wastewater treatment processes from a resource recovery perspective. Municipal wastewater cannot any longer be perceived as waste stream...

Management van Stedelijke Ontwikkeling: Beleid, sturing en institutionele veranderingen voor duurzame steden

Cities, as economic and cultural centres in our society, are major consumers of resources. They not only contribute to problems such as climate change, but also experience the risks and consequences thereof. Technological solutions to these problems are difficult to implement. They require larger-scale system changes, or encounter resistance....

City Branding, Sustainable Urban Development and the Rentier State. How do Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai present Themselves in the Age of Post Oil and Global Warming?

In the past three decades Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have realised a meteoric economic rise. Whereas the former two can be considered ‘rentier states’ heavily depending on oil (and gas) revenues, the latter only leans on oil for a mere 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP). Although the economic rise has brought considerable welfare, it has...

Exploring a Stakeholder Based Urban Densification and Greening Agenda for Rotterdam Inner City—Accelerating the Transition to a Liveable Low Carbon City

Work on a liveable low carbon city has often been approached in a technocratic way, not linking to other disciplines and urban practices at a large scale. This paper explores a stakeholder based urban agenda for a more liveable low carbon city by densifying and greening with the case study of Rotterdam inner city. Rotterdam presents a unique...

Evaluating sustainable urban development using urban metabolism indicators in urban design

Urban metabolism is a multi-disciplinary approach to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate resource flows in urban systems, which aims to provide important insights into the dynamics of cities to make them more ecologically responsible. It has been also introduced into the urban design domain, however most of the attempts concern only...

Implementing energy policies in urban development projects: The role of public planning authorities in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

Governing climate mitigation is complex, as the recurring gap between policy intentions and actions exhibits. Interventions at the urban scale represent an opportunity to implement energy policy targets. Urban development projects can function as carrier to implement innovative energy solutions as ‘by-product’. To do so, planners must...