Reservoirs Beneath: Groundwater sustainability in India's Ramganga river basin

This research studies groundwater sustainability in the Ramganga river basin of northern India. This region experiences a trifecta of hydrological stressors from groundwater over-extraction, frequent flooding during wet seasons, and agricultural droughts during dry seasons. There is a growing body of interventions known as...

Virtual X Water: A roadway to circular construction and demolition sector in South Holland

To achieve a circular economy in South Holland by 2050, the construction and demolition sector must use resources efficiently, close materials loops and work with fewer emissions. Currently recycling building materials is already the approach. Yet, since this costs a lot of energy and results mostly in downcycling, it is not ideal as a long term...

Drowning Deltas: A strategical spatial approach to soil subsidence in delta regions

Delta cities all around the world are under pressure from different forms of climate change effects. Soil subsidence as a result of peat oxidation, and anthropogenic loading of the soil. The soil in many of the heavily urbanised deltas around the world is subsiding faster than the see level is rising as a result of climate change. Few people are...

Socio-ecological Cohesion: Bioregional Strategy ‘Beyond Growth’ for the Szczecin Functional Area, Poland

Climate changes, sixths mass extinction, use of naturalenvironment and extreme landscape transformation have beenbringing question of long, sustainable future. Broadly accepted‘growth paradigm’ has been reaching ecological limits on theplanetary level (Steffen et al., 2015). On the local level Szczecincity, with its rural region, localized in...

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...

Overcoming the Paradox of Plenty: Resource Extraction and Urbanism in the Venezuelan Guayana

The ‘resource curse’, a term coined by Richard Auty in 1993, refers to the paradox that the abundance of natural resources tends to have adverse effects in a country’s economic, social and political well-being (Ross, 2015). This correlation has also led many to refer to this phenomenon as the ‘paradox of plenty’. When a country depends...

London 2041: Challenging a region's mono-centric development paradigm

This thesis proposes the development of a new centrality outside of Central London in order to combat the increasingly evident problems generated by London’s mono-centric model of development. In doing so, special attention is paid to understanding the region of Greater London as a networked urban system. Following a diagnosis of the current...

Metabolic Horizon: a regional strategy for Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Region's (RMBH) wastewater and solid waste

This thesis seeks to explore relations between Urban Metabolism’s framework and regional planning in Belo Horizonte Metropolitan Area (RMBH) - Brazil, and possible solutions to promote sustainable development through a better management of resources. In order to do so, the problem field defined in this research focuses on the area’s rapid...

Welcoming Amsterdam: A spatial strategy for a growing touristic region | case study Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Due to growing touristic movements worldwide, cities and landscapes start to experience or are already experiencing negative socioeconomic impacts, resulting in for example a decreased liveability and overcrowding. The increase of tourism is related to global trends like globalisation, economic well-being and migration movements. Amsterdam is...

Democratic landscape, an adaptive collaborative approach to regional urban planning

This graduation project focuses on one of our government's important tasks: spatial planning. Recent events have shown us that our current planning system has become insufficient: it is unable to cope with our rapidly changing society. Research on new and adaptive forms of collaborative planning is conducted. Forms that can be used alongside...

Shifting Centralities, Shared Lines: A redefined role for the peri - urban space in Delhi, National Capital Region

Green Belts Revisited: Rethinking and reconfiguring the spatial relationship of city and its adjacent countryside in north west European metropolitan regions: the case of the Randstad’s Green Heart

This project promotes building regional capacity by means of collaborative planning in order to co-evolve with change. It is not about weighting alternative solutions or leaving things to the market, but about cooperation between actors from the public, private and business sector, each with their own knowledges that can be employed to build...

Your Home’s Check-In Gate: Spatial Planning Strategies for the Urban Integration of the Development Driven by Amsterdam Schiphol Airport

This graduation thesis tackles the issue of airport-driven urban development in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area context. Initially planned outside of cities for security and pollution reasons airports are now attracting urban development in their proximity. This development consisting of hotels, office spaces or congress centres is driven by the...

'Territories in between': A comparative permeability study of two European regions between urban and rural - local and global

The in between city is often used to name areas which are neither urban nor rural, where “the sharp distinction between city and landscape has dissolved into an ecological and cultural continuum of a built structure between city and landscape”. Sieverts in (Huhlmann, 2007). The Thesis aims to gain a better understanding of how these territories...

Rediscovery of city potentiality, Hsinchu City, Taiwan

A regional development plan for West-Suriname

This report was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a MSc (Stedebouwkunde). Alternatives for the development of an undeveloped region in West Suriname are evaluated, e.g. a growth pole vs dispersed settlements; large scale industry and agriculture vs small scale industry and farming. A comprehensive regional development plan...