City-regional demographic composition and the fortunes of regional second cities

This paper asks whether meaningful differentiations between small and medium-sized cities – “regional second cities” – can be constructed based on their demographic composition, and how these cities differ among each other and from core cities. We investigate 64 regional second cities in eight British city-regions, based on the demographic...

Soft Spaces as a Traveling Planning Idea: Uncovering the Origin and Development of an Academic Concept on the Rise

This article analyses the academic concept of “soft spaces” from the perspective of traveling planning ideas. The concept has its origin in the United Kingdom but has also been used in other contexts. Within European Union policy-making, the term soft planning has emerged to describe the processes of cooperation and learning with an unclear...

Regional planning: an arena of interests, institutions and relations

This special issue approaches regional planning as a contested arena of strategic planning. With this view, we transcend the idea that regional planning is purely a matter of scale and approach the complexity of regional planning from three perspectives: interests, institutions and relations. The perspective of ‘interests’ reveals the various...

Rising Seas, Changing Coastlines, Safety Threats and the Need for Ecosystem Planning on the Sea-Land Continuum

Diverse actors have built port city regions at the edge of land and water, often over many centuries. Through their collaboration they have helped develop creative solutions to problems faced by port cities in the past. Their patterns of engagement have led to paradigms that can promote or hinder transitions. Identifying these paradigms and...

The process of metropolization in megacity-regions

This chapter presents the concept of metropolization, defined as the dynamics of interaction between spatial-functional, political-institutional and cultural-symbolic integration processes across city-regions, which transform these fragmented territories into coherent metropolitan systems. The authors first discuss the arguments in favour of...

Mapping as Gap-Finder: Geddes, Tyrwhitt, and the Comparative Spatial Analysis of Port City Regions

Politicians, planners, and mapmakers have long used mapping to depict selected spaces, to document natural and humanmade changes within them, and to identify spaces where planning intervention is needed or can be helpful. Recent innovations involving big data, GIS-based research and digital datasets offer opportunities for maps and mapping that...

Sustainable delta landscapes need smarter port city regions

Economic and spatial developments of port cities have large impacts on the quality of the natural environment, the safety of people living in the urbanized areas and the fresh water supply for drinking water and agriculture. Creating a proper balance among these different aspects, makes it necessary to provide new concepts and instruments at the...

Towards a Comparative Spatial Analysis for Port City Regions Based on Historical Geo-spatial Mapping

Researchers from multiple disciplines study ports and port cities using various forms of visualization. To better understand port cities’ challenges and opportunities, some use mathematical modeling of economic flows or shipping, while others use geo-spatial mapping of land and water territories. In the visualization of port city regions,...

The Port Cityscape: Spatial and institutional approaches to port city relationships

Port-related flows of goods, people and ideas cross institutional boundaries and create complex, fuzzy territories without strong, mutually supportive governance frameworks, legal systems and planning guidelines. Multi-scalar markets and global value chains leave their imprint on the spaces of the port and on neighboring urban and rural...

Past, Present and Future of Transit-Oriented Development in three European Capital City-Regions

The concept of Transit-Oriented Development—development near, and/or oriented to, mass transit facilities—has generated much interest in Europe over the last decade. Coined in the United States in the 1990s, the term “TOD” is frequently assumed to be a recent American import and a reaction to the consequences of mass motorization and sprawl....

The resurgence of regional design

Regional design, long a backbone for spatial planning, even if under other names, has become topical again for two reasons – as a key strategy and as a key tool in spatial management. This is due to several reasons. New conditions of urbanization that result from the convergence of several factors highlight the need for spatial strategy...

Urban Modality: Modelling and evaluating the sustainable mobility of urban areas in the city-region

This thesis proposes a framework for evaluating the mobility potential and performance of urban areas in the city region, as an instrument to support urban development that contributes positively to regional sustainable mobility objectives. The research takes a quantitative approach, modelling and measuring the characteristics of a city-region...

Patterns of sustainable mobility and the structure of modality in the Randstad city-region

Measuring sustainable accessibility potential using the mobility infrastructure's network configuration

This paper is an exploration into the analysis of public transport networks using space syntax approaches combined with concepts of sustainable accessibility. Present urban development policy aims to achieve sustainable mobility patterns, shifting mobility to soft transportation modes such as walking and cycling, supported by a more integrated...