The role of City Climate Networks in Promoting Citizen Participation in Municipalities: A Critical Multi-Case Analysis

Background<br/>At the COP21, cities were recognised as key actors in combatting climate change. In supporting cities, climate city networks such as transnational climate networks (TCNs) and national climate networks (NCNs) have emerged to enable cities in building capacities and formulating climate policy whilst also encouraging citizen...

Ex ante analysis of circular built environment policy coherence

As European governments adopt new circular built environment policies to cope with the socio-ecological crisis, the need for evaluating such policies gains in urgency. Ex post evaluation is, however, difficult as these policies have not been in place long enough to have had significant effects. Nonetheless, ex ante policy evaluation may be...

Diversity and Challenges of the Urban Commons: A Comprehensive Review

This study is a comprehensive literature review about the field of the urban commons and its diversity, which we investigate through the lens of the new commons. Acknowledging a potential for adaptive capacity in the urban commons, we classify its traits into ecosystem, socio-economic and institutional factors. To make our work more practical,...

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...

The Routledge Handbook of Planning History

The Routledge Handbook of Planning History offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview of planning history since its emergence in the late 19th century, investigating the history of the discipline, its core writings, key people, institutions, vehicles, education, and practice. Combining theoretical, methodological, historical, comparative,...

Towards Credible City Branding Practices: How Do Iran’s Largest Cities Face Ecological Modernization?

City branding is not only increasingly practiced in cities in established economies, but also among municipal governments in countries, until quite recently, rather closed off from the outside world. One country with a strong drive to engage in urban (re)development in the post-oil era through enhancing its ‘ecological modernization’ is Iran....

Towards a Joint Local Energy Transition Process in Urban Districts: The GO2Zero Simulation Game

The depletion of fossil fuel sources for our energy system and the influence on overall CO2 emissions drive the need to more sustainable energy systems. The transition towards a renewable energy system cannot be seen as a purely technical issue; it is strongly embedded within society. In this study, we analyze the stakeholder complexities of the...

From Problems to Potentials: The Urban Energy Transition of Gruž, Dubrovnik

IIn the challenge for a sustainable society, carbon-neutrality is a critical objective for all cities in the coming decades. In the EU City-zen project, academic partners collaborate to develop an urban energy transition methodology, which supports cities in making the energy transition to sustainable lifestyles and carbon neutrality. As part of...

Financing Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City: What lessons can be drawn for other large-scale sustainable city-projects?

Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City (SSTEC) is currently the best-known and arguably the most successful large-scale sustainable new town development project in China; as such, experiences gathered there are of significant importance for the development of other eco-cities in China and elsewhere. This article focuses on a thus far relatively...

Economic City Branding in China: the Multi-Level Governance of Municipal Self-Promotion in the Greater Pearl River Delta

In the urban development policy in China, city brands play an important role in setting targets for Chinese cities. These economic city brands, however, are not produced in an institutional vacuum: they are embedded in the visions national, provincial and municipal governments have for these cities, i.e., on multi-level governance. In this paper...

An Evidence-Based Review of Impacts, Strategies and Tools to Mitigate Urban Heat Islands

The impacts of climate changes on cities, which are home to over half of the world’s population, are already being felt. In many cases, the intensive speed with which urban centres have been growing means that little attention has been paid to the role played by climatic factors in maintaining quality of life. Among the negative consequences of...

Voxelization Algorithms for Geospatial Applications: Computational methods for voxelating spatial datasets of 3D city models containing 3D surface, curve and point data models

Voxel representations have been used for years in scientific computation and medical imaging. The main focus of our research is to provide easy access to methods for making large-scale voxel models of built environment for environmental modelling studies while ensuring they are spatially correct, meaning they correctly represent topological and...

Presenting a framework to analyze local climate policy and action in small and medium-sized cities

Academic attention to local climate policy usually focuses on large-sized cities. Given the climate challenges ahead this seems unjustified. Small and medium-sized cities (SMCs) deserve scholarly attention as well. The main question is: What factors influence climate change policy and local climate actions in SMCs? In this article we present...

Applications of 3D City Models: State of the Art Review

In the last decades, 3D city models appear to have been predominantly used for visualisation; however, today they are being increasingly employed in a number of domains and for a large range of tasks beyond visualisation. In this paper, we seek to understand and document the state of the art regarding the utilisation of 3D city models across...

Sustainable Urban Transport in the Developing World: Beyond Megacities

Megacities have frequently received a disproportionate amount of attention over other sizes of cities in recent discourse on urban sustainability. In this article, the authors argue that a focus on smaller and medium-sized cities is crucial to achieving substantial progress towards more sustainable urban development, not only because they are...

Cities (and regions) within a city: Subnational representations and the creation of European imaginaries in Brussels

This article explores how sub-national institutions – representations from cities and regions – help create a European imaginary in Brussels. Political scientists and other scholars have noted the importance of these city and regional institutions, but have paid little attention to their physical form. Through a select set of case studies, this...