Non-parasitic Economy: Towards a symbiosis between coastal cities and water

Coastal areas have always played a vital role in the economic, social, and political development of most countries. They support a diverse and productive coastal ecosystem that provides valuable goods and services (Airoldi et al., 2005). In these areas, urbanization and other land-use activities are rapidly increasing. However, human activities...

An adaptive strategic framework: Exploration of new upgrading strategies in Bogotá, Colombia

The rising poverty rates, internal displacement, market-oriented development, and social inequalities are some of the many factors that shaped the binary configuration of the so-called formal and informal urban fabric of Bogotá. Urban informality emerges as the answer to a lack of opportunities and spatial offers, evidencing the inability of the...

Cultivated Ecologies: Operational Landscapes of Material Production as Flood-Related Risk Infrastructure

This thesis elaborates on a theoretical, epistemological and design research framework for the possibility of an operative synthesis of, on the one hand, climate-related risk management (primarily, flood exposure from multiple source, i.e. sea level rise and coastal/tidal flooding, fluvial flooding and pluvial flooding) and, on the other, the...

Urban Resources: Banking on cities for secondary resources to release the pressure on natural environment and progress towards Environmentally Sustainable urban integrated systems

This thesis seeks to explore the concept of Circular Economy and its integration into urban planning as a tool of implementation. The goal of this thesis is to develop environmentally sustainable cities. To develop environmentally sustainable cities, the thesis focuses on two major resource flows in the city: food and water, whose waste streams...

Crossing the line for Nature: Cross-border planning collaboration for effective Ecosystem-based adaptation

Climate change is creating alterations and increasing risks to both nature and our built environment. One of the most evident risks is sea level rise. We need to reconsider the way we have been preparing cities to face the climate change related issues. The hard infrastructure that has been used in the past to deal with these issues requires...

Contesting metropolization by Neoliberalism: Activating vulnerable areas through inter-municipal spatial planning in Santiago de Chile

Metropolization process in Santiago de Chile has been strongly influenced by neoliberal rationale in the field of urban planning. A diffuse interaction between the forces of the urban land market, national-global trends of capital agglomeration and fragmented governance have led to a highly segregated socio-spatial structure. These processes...

Informal Natures: Landscape Infrastructure design for resilient, equitable and adaptable socio-ecological systems in Cape town

Cape town stands at top of the most “water stressed cities” list in the world, like the other global south cities, it has disregarded its natural systems in its spatial planning and water management. This pushed the city to a Day Zero situation in 2018 implementing water restrictions on all residents of the city. But the scenario in the...

Resilient Energy, Energetic City: Adaptive strategies for coastal system in transition

The project is about the reverse of risks from changing climate and transitional energy system into opportunities to become evolutionary resilient cities.<br/>Climate change is happening globally and is becoming more and more serious now. The temperature rise, sea-level rise, land shifting, precipitation pattern change, extreme weather increase...

Re-Natured Economy: From pollutants to productive landscapes

In the light of climate change, ecosystem derangement and debasement of local economies in the name of globalisation and free trade, capitalism has almost exhausted its source of nourishment: Nature. Within today’s globalised urbanisation, cities seem to be better linked to the planetary system of production and trade than to their surrounding...

The Movement in Movement: Towards a Responsive and Cohesive Strategic Regeneration for Bogotá's Historic City Center

This thesis aims to contribute to the definition of a comprehensive and integrated vision for Bogotá, Colombia, in terms of urban regeneration and social cohesion. It attempts to facilitate the construction of civic meaning, institutional cooperation and spatial revitalization in a historically unequal territory. By analyzing and recognizing the...

An attempt to regain Paradise: Urban regeneration of the largest residential community - Paradise Gateway in Beijing - from the inter-scalar perspective

Chinese cities are going through an intense transformation of urbanization, which the world haven't experienced before. Beijing, as the capital, is the first to be affected by both developments and problems through this transformation. The flow of people from rural to urban, and from small cities to large cities is dramatic. The phenomenon of...

Tragedy of the Commons?: Local Adaptation to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of sea level rise in San Francisco Bay Area.

Rapid urbanization triggers in short term or long term highly advanced economy but at the same time create sectors of poor/neglected neighborhoods or communities in our urban environment that faces the hardest challenge to response and recover in the face of climate change variables. The administrative responses to a climate disaster are...