When the Bear Comes to Town: How the City Could Create Nature

The relationship between humans and nature is in permanent change. Where the city and nature used to be seen as enemies that needed to be kept away from each other, the current paradigm looks at a more symbiotic relationship. In this, man is seen as part of nature, and the city is seen as a determining factor in providing conditions for a rich...

Ontwerpen met natuur en landschap voor toekomstbestendige steden: Concevoir avec la nature et le paysage pour des villes à l'épreuve du temps

Duurzame verstedelijking, klimaatadaptatie en biodiversiteitsontwikkeling vragen om een ontwerpaanpak die het landschap als uitgangspunt neemt. In een dergelijke aanpak staat het ontwerpen met natuurlijke en sociaalculturele processen centraal. Naast natuur zijn mensen een belangrijk element van een landschappelijke aanpak. Het landschap...

Towards fossil free cities – Emission assessment of food and resources consumption with the FEWprint carbon accounting platform

Current urbanization rates concentrate the ever growing demand for food, energy and water (FEW) resources particularly in cities, making them one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The FEW nexus integrative approach offers a potential framework for sustainable resource management in cities. However, existing nexus evaluation...

In-Between Nature: Reconsidering Design Practices for Territories In-Between from a Social-Ecological Perspective

During past decades, Territories in-Between (TiB) have gained increased attention among researchers in the field of urban planning and design. TiB are often considered to be underused, lack spatial quality and are under mounting pressure of urban densification. However, the rich diversity of land uses and abundance of semi-open spaces in the TiB...

Nature-Based Deployment Strategies for Multiple Paces of Change: The Case of Oimachi, Japan

In this article a planning approach is proposed to accommodate different paces of urbanisation. Instead of responding to a single problem with a Pavlov-type of response, analysis shows that the transformational tempi of different urban landscapes require multiple deployment strategies to develop urban environments that are sustainable and...

Nature-Based Urbanization: Scan Opportunities, Determine Directions and Create Inspiring Ecologies

To base urbanization on nature, inspiring ecologies are necessary. The concept of nature-based solutions (NBS) could be helpful in achieving this goal. State of the art urban planning starts from the aim to realize a (part of) a city, not to improve natural quality or increase biodiversity. The aim of this article is to introduce a planning...

Pig Farming vs. Solar Farming: Exploring Novel Opportunities for the Energy Transition

Amsterdam aims to bring down its carbon footprint by 55% in 2030 and by 95% in 2050. For the built environment, plotted pathways towards carbon neutrality primarily revolve around the reduction of fossil based energy demand and the transition towards renewable energy production strategies. The consumption of food resources, and its significant...

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...

Reconnecting green: Towards a multi-dimensional biophilic city

Densification and greening of cities seem to exclude one another. How to deal with this? This research shows a first exploration of how city green can be optimized by integrating the facade-and rooftop green into the neighbourhood landscape. To do this, biophilic design principles were applied from a landscape architectural perspective. Due to...

Urban Energy Masterplanning: Approaches, Strategies, and Methods for the Energy Transition in Cities

Many cities across the world have the ambition of becoming carbon neutral, but exact figures of progress toward that goal are limited. Regarding Europe’s not overly ambitious 2020 carbon emission targets, many countries still have a long way to go (see Fig. 1), with cities as the prime objects for improvement. It is fair to say that the energy...

The Dynamics of Urban Ecosystem Governance in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

We explore whether Rotterdam city has the governance capacity in terms of processes at place, and the attention in terms of vision and strategy to take up an integrated approach toward urban resilience. We adopt an interpretative policy analysis approach to assess the dynamics of urban ecosystem governance considering interviews, gray literature...

REAP2: New concepts for the exchange of heat in cities

Cities need to become independent from finite resources, among which fossil fuels. There is great potential to save energy is many cities, however the generation of power is insufficient due to the limited space as a result of urban densities. An energy source less commonly explored is reuse of waste heat from various urban functions. In that...

Cities ready for energy crisis: Building urban energy resilience

Various sources indicate that threats to modern cities lie in the availability of essential streams, among which energy. Most cities are strongly reliant on fossil fuels; not one case of a fully self-sufficient city is known. Engineering resilience is the rate at which a system returns to a single steady or cyclic state following a perturbation....

Energetic urban planning: A novel approach to carbon-neutral cities

The City of Amsterdam has ambitious goals as to become climate neutral. This will only be possible through a structured approach to both new and existing neighbourhoods. Following steps from the New Stepped Strategy - as used in the Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning (REAP) - and using the methodology of Energy Potential Mapping (EPM), the...

The Amsterdam guide to energetic urban planning

The City of Amsterdam has ambitious goals as to become climate neutral. This will only be possible through a structured approach to both new and existing neighbourhoods. Following steps from the New Stepped Strategy - as used in the Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning (REAP) - and using the methodology of Energy Potential Mapping (EPM), the...

The Amsterdam guide to energetic urban planning

The City of Amsterdam has ambitious goals as to become climate neutral. This will only be possible through a structured approach to both new and existing neighbourhoods. Following steps from the New Stepped Strategy - as used in the Rotterdam Energy Approach and Planning (REAP) - and using the methodology of Energy Potential Mapping (EPM), the...