Spacematrix: Space, Density and Urban Form - revised edition

Spacematrix explores the potential of urban density as a tool for urban planning and design.<br/>This revised and extended edition of Meta Berghauser Pont and Per Haupt’s 2010 volume includes an extensive analysis of the relations between density, urban form and performance – a prerequisite for understanding and successfully predicting the...

The Bristol Green Capital Partnership: An exemplar of reflexive governance for sustainable urban development?

The theory of ‘reflexive governance’ prioritises process over outcomes and advocates participatory procedures, valorising multiple sources of knowledge, mutual learning and continuous evolution of organisational forms. Through the lens of reflexive governance, we explore the evolution of Bristol Green Capital Partnership, which, since 2008, has...

The SPPD-WRF framework: A novel and holistic methodology for strategical planning and process design of water resource factories

This paper guides decision making in more sustainable urban water management practices that feed into a circular economy by presenting a novel framework for conceptually designing and strategically planning wastewater treatment processes from a resource recovery perspective. Municipal wastewater cannot any longer be perceived as waste stream...

Management van Stedelijke Ontwikkeling: Beleid, sturing en institutionele veranderingen voor duurzame steden

Cities, as economic and cultural centres in our society, are major consumers of resources. They not only contribute to problems such as climate change, but also experience the risks and consequences thereof. Technological solutions to these problems are difficult to implement. They require larger-scale system changes, or encounter resistance....

City Branding, Sustainable Urban Development and the Rentier State. How do Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai present Themselves in the Age of Post Oil and Global Warming?

In the past three decades Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai have realised a meteoric economic rise. Whereas the former two can be considered ‘rentier states’ heavily depending on oil (and gas) revenues, the latter only leans on oil for a mere 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP). Although the economic rise has brought considerable welfare, it has...

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...

Evaluating sustainable urban development using urban metabolism indicators in urban design

Urban metabolism is a multi-disciplinary approach to qualitatively and quantitatively evaluate resource flows in urban systems, which aims to provide important insights into the dynamics of cities to make them more ecologically responsible. It has been also introduced into the urban design domain, however most of the attempts concern only...

Implementing energy policies in urban development projects: The role of public planning authorities in Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands

Governing climate mitigation is complex, as the recurring gap between policy intentions and actions exhibits. Interventions at the urban scale represent an opportunity to implement energy policy targets. Urban development projects can function as carrier to implement innovative energy solutions as ‘by-product’. To do so, planners must...

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...

Institutional conditions for sustainable private sector-led urban development projects: A conceptual model

Across the globe sustainable private sector-led urban development projects (SPUDPs) in the built environment rarely commence as real estate developers face several institutional barriers which limit their capacity to develop economic-viable, social-responsible, environmental-friendly urban places. Hence, SPUDPs are a promising development...

Circular Urban Systems: Moving Towards Systems Integration

Today, most cities function linearly. One way to improve their environmental performance is to make a transition from linear to Circular Urban Systems (CUS) so that part of the waste streams becomes valorised locally. This does not only require technical but also organisational and institutional changes. Moreover it implies that links have to be...

System integration: Condition for success. The case of Hammarby Sjöstad and Eva-Lanxmeer

Today, many new urban areas, such as cities, towns, villages, or districts, are being built worldwide and their completion requires the development of a number of infrastructures. Traditionally, these infrastructures are planned in parallel. However, increased environmental awareness is pushing cities to improve their environmental performance....

Innovative governance of sustainable urban development: A comparative analysis

More than half of the world population lives in urban areas concentrating and increasing the magnitude of social and environmental impacts. The potential role of cities in a transition to a sustainable society started to be widely recognized after the 1992 Rio conference where the Agenda 21 program was signed. Since then, a number of urban...

The mechanics of sustainable urban development: The case of Lanxmeer, Culemborg, NL

Sustainable urban development projects are initiated almost every day. They are the results of very dynamic processes during which a number of decisions have to be taken according to the local conditions. Eventually each project follows its own path. The aim of this paper is to gain insight in the mechanics of sustainable urban development in...

Restructuring cities for sustainability: A metabolism approach

The FP7-funded SUME project (Sustainable Urban Metabolism for Europe) is focusing on the way how future urban systems can be designed to be consistently less damaging to the environment and particularly to climate change than in the present. Urban development scenarios linked with an agent-based urban metabolism model will try to demonstrate the...