A flood vulnerability index for coastal cities and its use in assessing climate change impacts

Worldwide, there is a need to enhance our understanding of vulnerability and to develop methodologies and tools to assess vulnerability. One of the most important goals of assessing coastal flood vulnerability, in particular, is to create a readily understandable link between the theoretical concepts of flood vulnerability and the day-to-day...

Selection of City Distribution Locations in Urbanized Areas

This paper aims to apply a preference method for selecting optimal city distribution reloading locations in urbanized areas. The focus in the optimization is on trucks entering the urbanized area where the truck can choose between at least two locations with similar distances determined by a specified integer value generated randomly by a given...

Improving Urban Freight Transport Sustainability by Carriers: Best Practices from The Netherlands and the EU Project CityLog

ers face serious challenges in making their urban freight transport efficient and sustainable. Local authorities claim that many carriers are not innovative and do not cooperate in improving their city logistics operations. There are three solution directions to make urban freight transport more efficient and more sustainable: policy, technology...

City Blueprints: 24 Indicators to Assess the Sustainability of the Urban Water Cycle

Climate change, population growth and increased consumption, coupled with urbanization, are all placing increased pressure on water management. This global challenge can often best be addressed at the local level, e.g. in cities by optimizing the role of civil society. Although there are approaches for assessing the sustainability of countries...

Evidence-based design: Satellite positioning studies of city centre user groups

In an era of increasing competition between urban cores, positive pedestrian experiences become crucial in attracting visitors and retaining residents. The dichotomy between use and evaluation of public spaces enables the prioritisation of urban design and management interventions in an age of austerity. When spaces are highly used but evaluated...

The interaction between port and delta: The case of Kaohsiung

Developing knowledge cities: Aligning urban, corporate and university strategies

The successful development of knowledge cities increasingly depends on collaboration between urban and regional authorities, knowledge institutions and businesses. Policy makers and business strategists do acknowledge the interrelated objectives of these actors in the knowledge economy and their different roles in a common network. They also...

Management of urban development: Example of the transformation of two Dutch former port areas

The more traditional approach of developing cities through government lead town planning has been gradually shifting to a more entrepreneurial approach of strategic management of both public and private initiatives in the urban environment. This approach combines aspects of governance, urban planning, economic development, financial management,...

A building kissed back to life; interview

Karin Laglas has been Dean of the Architecture Faculty since January 2011. She sees the wide-ranging nature of the faculty as a strength, but would also like to reduce ‘fragmentation’.

Training city developers, the Dutch way of education

Fundamental changes in economy, demography, climate and technology create tremendous challenges for city developers. City developers need to anticipate diverse transitions and increasing uncertainty associated with urban development processes but also need to balance societal forces. In order to equip urban managers with the most advanced but...

The influence of road pricing on physical distribution in urban areas

The Dutch government decided to implement a road pricing system called, ‘paying differently for mobility’. The main idea is that road users have to pay for using the road infrastructure instead of for owning a car. In the future, the price per kilometre will also depend on the time of the day and the location of the travel. Crowded locations and...

How efficient is city logistics? Estimating ecological footprints for urban freight deliveries

In medium and large cities, the delivery of goods represents a significant contribution to the problems of congestion, lack of parking, pollution and energy consumption. The characteristics of this type of transport are also very different from passenger mobility, even though they are often assimilated, due to the lack of specific tools for...

Sustainable Housing Production, thanks to the Economic Crises

A drastic effect of the economic crises 2009 is the cutback of housing production in the Netherlands, a down-hill trend from 80.000 to 45.000 a year. Unless the population of the country is stable there is an enormous need for new housing every year. Housing production is required because of vitalisation of cities. Housing production in the...

Municipal strategies for introducing housing on industrial estates as part of compact-city policies in the Netherlands

Promoting mixed-use development is part of policies aimed at enhancing urban quality. Until recently, however, industry and housing have rarely been found together in the same development as there is a long tradition of keeping these functions separate. As part of a compact-city policy, Dutch local authorities are in the process of introducing...

The limited potential of the creative city concept: Policy practices in four Dutch cities

The creative economy is considered to be crucial for urban growth in the twenty-first century. Many professionals and academics emphasise the dynamic role played by creative production in the urban economy, and in particular the production of commercialised cultural goods and services. Others attribute importance to the roles played by amenities...