Post-Spartacusplan: Exploring the future possibilities of innovative public transportation for spatial and mobility transition in Belgian Limburg

Spartacusplan, the transportation plan for the Belgian province of Limburg from 2004, is now turned into the most extensive and ambitious bus rapid transit (BRT) project in Europe. However, the proposed vehicles and network do not correspond well to the region’s highly dispersed, poly-centric structure. Moreover, the dispersed urbanisation...

Disrupting the gendered order: How to advance beyond Vienna’s strategic approach to gender mainstreaming in urban planning

The challenges women encounter due to numerous disparities within social superstructures are finally finding their way into mainstream debates. Interestingly, Vienna is the first European city that has been incorporating the concept of gender mainstreaming into urban planning practices since the 1990s, by providing formal platforms for women to...

Urban Voices: Citizen Voice: An innovative Open-source Map-based tool for effective public participation

Cities around the world constitute complex systems, as sets of sub-components that are connected and interact with each other. Due to this inherent complexity, there are numerous emerging challenges that need to be tackled. In those complex environments, various-interest groups collaborate and compete to achieve their goals and interests,...

Reclaiming scarce public space: Developing a framework for the bottom-up integration of micro mobility hubs in dense urban neighbourhoods with limited free space

Ever since the reconstruction after World War II, it has become impossible to imagine our streets without the automobile. A car-centred public space has become the status quo, while this appears to have far-reaching consequences for both climate and society. Herefore, the transition toward more people-centric cities is brought into full swing....

Zwolle: The redevelopment of a fortified city

Demolition or renovation has always been a matter of debate in the built environment, especially in densely populated cities with little room for new construction. In the past, people often opted for the former, demolition, but today people are increasingly realizing what has already been lost over the years. Many old fortified cities have also...

Cities for Citizens: Identification of Public Values and their Conflicts in Urban Space

In the wake of more inclusive and sustainable cities, as targeted in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 11, public administrators and urban planners aspire to incorporate the pluralism of public values into decision making. Although theoretical work exists since the 1990, public values and their conflicts are yet to be empirically identified...

Offshore Urbanism: Using design to understand, represent and employ human-sea relations in the spatial reorganisation of the Barents Sea

This thesis builds on the proposition that the ocean is both an urban and social space. Therefore, marine planning needs to consider socio-cultural risks and opportunities to be deemed sustainable. This reconceptualisation is especially relevant for the Barents Sea, where retreating sea ice leaves the ocean more accessible to marine traffic and...

The Revival of the Social Housing Community: Providing security and shelter for the urban poor

Adequate housing has long been considered a basic human right. Trends of globalisation, financialisation and urbanisation are oppressing this right. Social housing is neglected by authorities and stigmatised by society. Local, low-income residents are dispossessed and displaced, and social housing is close to disappearance. London has become a...

Urban Farming in the Western Garden City: A study to the employment and benefits of urban farming techniques in three neighbouhroods of Amsterdam

The linear food supply chain is putting significant pressures on our resources and our environment. Moreover, global warming is leading to climate change, making our environment more uncertain and challenging food safety around the globe. Therefore new ways of producing food locally need to be researched. This paper investigates how food can be...

Of Stones and Travelers: The Venetian matter: A productive machine in its own consuming

Venezia, la Serenissima. The most serene Republic. One adjective is sufficient to identify the city of Venice; more complicated is to figure out its singularities: the city of canals, trades, cultural exchange, gate between the west and the east, the city of the myth, the romantic city, the city of the endless descriptions. “At once solid and...

An interactive design tool for urban planning using the size of the living space as unit of measurement

In urban planning, one of the common units of measurement for population density is the amount of households per hectare. However, the actual size of the households is seldom considered, neither in 2D nor in 3D. This thesis proposes a method to calculate the average size of the households from existing urban areas based on available open data...

The Buffer Zone on Marineterrein: A Safe and Inclusive District for Civilians and Marines

The thesis projects seeks to renew the relationship between the Royal Dutch Marine Camp and the city of Amsterdam. With the Royal Dutch Marines breaking an administrative agreement in July 2018 and deciding to continue occupy about 50% of the area on Marineterrein, the visions and ambitions for the development of a future-proof district had been...

A New "Square Deal": For the "Soul" of East Harlem's Social Housing Projects

New York is currently going through a construction boom as developers try to take advantage of rising land values and rents caused by economic growth, resulting in a lack of affordable housing available to middle-income families. The current Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has made it a priority to meet the demands and challenges of the...

Urban Resources: Banking on cities for secondary resources to release the pressure on natural environment and progress towards Environmentally Sustainable urban integrated systems

This thesis seeks to explore the concept of Circular Economy and its integration into urban planning as a tool of implementation. The goal of this thesis is to develop environmentally sustainable cities. To develop environmentally sustainable cities, the thesis focuses on two major resource flows in the city: food and water, whose waste streams...

The Neighbourhood Medicine: Realizing a dementia friendly Ommoord

The world’s population is aging and as a result chronic illnesses become more widespread. The disease dementia will play a major role in the future of the Netherland. Moreover the people with dementia have to stay at home for as long as possible, which is also in line with their wishes. Ommoord is one of the neighbourhoods which can expect an...

Project-Related Governance: Between Effective Process and Inclusive Development: The Case of the Cape Town Waterfront

The challenge of an effective governance process and the demand for inclusive development form a tension, traceable in contemporary (Re)development Projects in South Africa. Based on the legislative premise of urban planning and architectural design, private sector developers must engage with urban authorities in the Project-related Governance...

From Ambition to Innovation: A closer look at the physical characteristics of innovation districts

Context: The city of The Hague is located in The Netherlands, in the province of Zuid-Holland and with nearly 500,000 inhabitants it is the third largest city of the country. The increasing dynamics of globalization have also made its way to The Hague, where urban competitiveness is increasingly considered to be an important aspect for the city...

Social Urban Planning