Reimagining industrial heritage: facilitating tomorrow's manufacturing industry towards a circular city

For many years, the concept of adaptive reuse of buildings has been researched. A focus on heritage and specifically the implementation of circular economy frameworks is however relatively new. Adaptive reuse of heritage is often concerned a circular strategy for its material reuse. However, there are many more dimensions to circularity in...

Municipal Circular Land Tenders: How do they affect real estate developers?

Many countries have committed themselves to the target for a circular economy (CE) in 2050. In this transition, the construction sector is important. One of the tools governments can use to stimulate circular building, is by incorporating circular tender criteria in land tendering. This thesis aims to improve circular land tendering requests by...

City Branding in Polycentric Regions: A qualitative study of implementation in three Dutch Cities

The purpose of this research is to study the implementation of ecological modernization branding in the cities of The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht in the Netherlands. These cities use ecological modernization branding to attract people, projects and investments. For example, they may project the image of being ‘smart’ and commission projects to...

Turning noise-barriers into sustainable energy systems: A full approach from experimental data to energy and cost modeling with a focus on urban wind

Current urban systems have a linear metabolism; they rely on imported resources, which are used inefficiently, and they produce waste flows. Urban areas can become productive and not only consumptive if a well-planned distributed energy system is implemented. Switching to renewables, however, means rethinking today’s urban landscape entirely....

Development towards circular urban areas, a proposal for a hybrid conceptual framework: A casestudy at the Binckhorst, The Hague

Cities today account for approximately 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The process of urbanization increases emissions and places an increasing pressure on resources and livability in urban areas. While challenged with the effects of climate change, governments show increasing interest in integrating sustainable development in...

The process of urban systems integration: an integrative approach towards the institutional process of systems integration in urban area development

Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. This makes them centres of resource consumption and waste production. Sustainable development is seen as an opportunity to respond to the consequences of urbanisation and climate change. In recent years the concepts of circularity and urban symbiosis have emerged as popular...

Meaningful Circular Metabolism

The main products of this graduation are a new pattern language to map difficult/technical interventions in spatial tiles, a GIS model for assessing urban metabolism potentials and restrictions and a new approach for applying urban metabolism measurements on neighbourhood level. A personal motivation for me is the relation between the urban...

Zero Waste Buiksloterham: an Integrated Approach to Circular Cities

Waste is one of the core problems in sustainable city design. In current city planning waste management systems are often disregarded. However, concepts that deal with waste and resources within urban areas are getting more and more attention. ‘Zero waste’ is one of the most visionary concepts for solving waste problems. The concept of the zero...

Designing Circular Cities: Exploring the development of circular economy in cities

Urban policymakers face more complex issues than ever before in developing a socially-, economically- and environmentally sustainable cities. Some cities have already started transitioning towards a circular economy in this endeavor. This research explores the ways in which four pioneering cities have started navigating this transition, and uses...