The city of Delft in the Netherlands has an international population of students attending TU Delft. This heterogeneous population is composed of several nationalities. In heterogeneity, participation is difficult to achieve. This case is no different with limited interaction among international students of these groups and the rest of students. This research study an online platform to stimulate information sharing and improves the sense connectedness among students. The platform is based on four main principles: 1) information, 2) activities & space, 3) multicultural approach, and 4) key actors. Moreover, the platform includes and aim for students to use narratives to promote information sharing. Furthermore, the platform includes features that allow the generation of activities and the connection with physical spaces in the city. The process starts with a survey to collect the perspective of different student groups and elaborate on the requirements of the platform. After the elucidation of the requirements, the next step is designing and developing the platform. The platform has international master students as users and collects information about its use. Furthermore, to complement the data, interviews helps to understand the motivation behind the information posted and the use of different services of the ICT artifact. The results show that narrative is not as relevant as useful information to stimulate interaction. Furthermore, the information shared using the platform must be useful, relevant and interesting with the intention of providing help to other members to increase the perception of connectedness and community. Finally, information including physical references of the city generates more interesting interactions.

Climate change impacts disproportionately the most vulnerable citizens in urban areas. Meaningful participation can be one of the tools to combat urban adaptation injustice, as understanding vulnerabilities and co-creation with vulnerable groups of citizens can help create adaptations that are fair to everyone. In Prague, Czech Republic, post-war neighbourhoods house the majority of the residents, but the public space in these areas is often overlooked, undermaintained and exclusive. This thesis analyses the realm of urban adaptation justice, participation with socially vulnerable groups of citizens and public spaces of Černý Most in Prague. In collaboration with two local NGOs, three participatory events in the field were designed and executed: A streetwalk with homeless people, A neighbourhood walks with residents, and A co-design workshop with socially vulnerable teenagers. These events helped uncover a social conflict in the neighbourhood, resulting in alterations of the public space to intentionally exclude certain groups of citizens. This exclusion results in hurting everyone and reinforcing and redistributing sources of vulnerability. The design consists of general neighbourhood design principles that are usable throughout the whole district. The final part is a design of a new public park, addressing the conflict, designed using the outcomes of the participation events and proposing a new future for the neighbourhood.

The energy transition is a complex challenge for cities. All sectors of society will have to change. Many sustainable opportunities arise, but injustices are still present. Often, people in disadvantaged positions are not properly recognized, included in decisions and left to deal with the burdens. Lack in proper citizen participation, causes current energy transition policies to appear distant from the local, implementation scale. Using socio-economic, spatial analysis and governance mapping, this project showcases energy vulnerabilities and the skewed institutional perspectives on local transition capacities. By combining expert interviews, policy analysis and imaginative co-creation sessions in the case study area of Hillesluis, Rotterdam, a more just governance structure and inclusive participatory practice can be formed. The project exposes injustices in underlying systems of power and decision making, as many policy incentives are aimed towards financial benefits. The current participatory process of transitions in itself is characterized by ex-ante responses and informs rather than actively engages communities. This results in many citizens who are in disadvantaged positions, albeit financially or socially, are left out. Thus keeping loops of injustice in place. Through theoretical and co-creation experimenting, a just participation process was formed, however the execution therein showcased many difficulties. Measures such as frequent city-wide campaigns, transparency and adaptive area-based strategies could divert these fragilities in participatory processes for future sustainable transition research. As socio-technical transitions are becoming more complex, innovative perspectives and empirical research are needed. This project not only critically examines current governance structures and participation processes, but proposes measures to overcome the experienced socio-spatial and procedural barriers towards just energy transitions. Resulting in more human-centred and socially innovative policy aims towards a just energy transition for all.

The energy transition is a complex challenge for cities. All sectors of society will have to change. Many sustainable opportunities arise, but injustices are still present. Often, people in disadvantaged positions are not properly recognized, included in decisions and left to deal with the burdens. Lack in proper citizen participation, causes current energy transition policies to appear distant from the local, implementation scale. Using socio-economic, spatial analysis and governance mapping, this project showcases energy vulnerabilities and the skewed institutional perspectives on local transition capacities. By combining expert interviews, policy analysis and imaginative co-creation sessions in the case study area of Hillesluis, Rotterdam, a more just governance structure and inclusive participatory practice can be formed. The project exposes injustices in underlying systems of power and decision making, as many policy incentives are aimed towards financial benefits. The current participatory process of transitions in itself is characterized by ex-ante responses and informs rather than actively engages communities. This results in many citizens who are in disadvantaged positions, albeit financially or socially, are left out. Thus keeping loops of injustice in place. Through theoretical and co-creation experimenting, a just participation process was formed, however the execution therein showcased many difficulties. Measures such as frequent city-wide campaigns, transparency and adaptive area-based strategies could divert these fragilities in participatory processes for future sustainable transition research. As socio-technical transitions are becoming more complex, innovative perspectives and empirical research are needed. This project not only critically examines current governance structures and participation processes, but proposes measures to overcome the experienced socio-spatial and procedural barriers towards just energy transitions. Resulting in more human-centred and socially innovative policy aims towards a just energy transition for all.

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 and applied in a context of relational urban space. This study makes use of a case study-mixed methods approach combining a quantitative strand to identify public values and their conflicts from geo-located citizen contributions using natural language processing with a qualitative strand that leverages expert workshops. Integrating the findings from both strands embedded in the case study of Hamburg, Germany, there is evidence for a broader conceptualization of public values. In a new conceptual tool named "public value spheres", the main identified public values of social equity, livability, economic opportunity, ecologic quality, safety, health and conservatism are displayed. A total of nine archetypical spatial public value conflicts were found within Hamburg, among them the newly identified "externality conflict", "dangers of nature conflict" and the "drawback of beauty conflict". The findings provide urban planners and practitioners with a new tool to account for the value-laden nature of relational urban space in future participatory processes. The citizenry itself could profit from a better discourse due to aggregation of voices in participatory tools and a transparent mapping of public values that creates a sense of the pluralism of public values within a city. Future research is needed to expand the conceptual tool of public value spheres with case studies of different cities and to investigate possible constituting socioeconomic factors of public values within urban planning.