Classical music oftenly is associated as boring, muddy; as an activity for the older people. Eventually this older generation will be gone for good, leaving even less pubic than it now has. As this problem grows the relationship between classical music and the public shifts. The lack of connection becomes more obvious, making it more and more distant. Through the case study of the concert building De Doelen in Rotterdam, a design study with the concept of the "promenade architecturale" is held to explore the insights on how to revitalize this subculture by making connection with the public on many different levels. In order to also design an acoustic well-functioning concert hall, a research paper is written about the architectural interventions in optimizing the acoustic aspects of a concert hall.

As a foreseeable trend, the automated mobility is believed to change our city in many aspects. It draws out a question to urbanists: is the application of the new technological innovation an urgency in our agenda, or the utilization of it for other urban issues should be. This project is based on the latter one. 
Like many other mega cities over the world, Amsterdam is also facing to the explosive of urban population.The following socio-economic and spatial pressures on the built environment like densification and concerns of livability are all the urgencies that we should put in the agenda of future urban development. Especially the present common forms of urban block are at the point of collapse due to its limited spatial capacity and performance on livability. What automated mobility can do? This thesis mainly focuses on the spatial form of urban blocks in Amsterdam, and their performance on spatial capacity and livability, aiming at creating future blocks that meet the demands of densification and quality of life in the coming era of automated mobility. How to understand and measure the relationship between urban form, density and livability based on contexts is the core of this thesis. The design proposals is more like the conceptual models that shows the possibilities of how the automated mobility can be utilized in the processes of formation and transformation of urban blocks when considering densification and livability.

The Alps, also called the ‘water tower’ of Europe, are one of the biggest freshwater reserves of the continent, extending over seven countries. However, due to climate change, resulting in melting glaciers and more frequent dry periods, the availability of fresh water is seasonally changing and overall, decreasing in the future. This conflicts not only with the growing demand provoked by ongoing urbanization processes in and around the Alpine Arc, but also a rising interest in economic sectors like tourism and hydro power. This project proposes a new interplay between pre- and inner-alpine areas by giving particular consideration to the natural environment. It seeks to coordinate the use for water as a resource under the framework of institutional thickness. Thereby it explores national planning cultures, existing cooperation programmes and the added value of a macro-regional strategy for the integral management of hydraulic resources in the alpine context. Finally, a seasonal development strategy in a case study region is designed as a possible translation of a macro-regional strategy into space.

Mumbai is the commercial capital of the country. The economy and morphology of the city has been shaped by the physical infrastructure but has neglected the ecological and social aspects in planning. This has led to the extreme vulnerability of the region to ecological and social negative externalities. The region experiences urban flooding every year disrupting the daily lives and inflicting loss to both the life and livelihood of many. Also, the state of emergency due to climate change that the planet deals with fighting sustenance for humankind is a severe challenge. Especially Mumbai, one of the largest cities in the world, is at risk of being wiped out. It is built from an archipelago of islands, the city’s historic downtown core-the island city is particularly vulnerable along with most of the suburban districts. This leads to an urgent need for providing resilience to the socio-ecological system in the region by providing climate adaptive capacity against floods.

Chennai, a historical seaside city on the southern coast of India, has undergone extensive urbanisation ever since the postcolonial economic reform of the nineties. Mismanaged urban growth that predominantly prioritises economic development has led to a situation of congestion, lack of public space and forgotten ecological networks in the city. These issues, over time, have amounted to a living environment that is negligent of the pedestrian, and lacks many opportunities for social interactions, opportunities to sit, walk or just wander in the city. The recently redefined building codes stand to further exacerbate the situation, due to the lack of an integrated perspective of densification in the city. This project aims to find potentials in the ever changing and densifying city, to facilitate liveable and vibrant environments for those who inhabit it. The process of densification and urban growth is redefined in Chennai, through the evaluation of its synergies and conflicts with the mobility network and the ecological systems in the city. This results in a trans-scalar design and planning strategy that facilitates urban transformation in a holistic manner, taking into account ecological impacts, mobility patterns and local daily use patterns of public space by the people in the city.

The issue of suburban sprawl in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTA) has been increasing the pressures of land consumption, infrastructure development, resource consumption, and population growth over the past 50 years. The same can be said for many peripheral regions of Canada’s urban areas. In 2011, two thirds of the population of Canada lived in some form of suburban neighbourhood, and for the GTA a larger percentage of 86%. Though this growth continues, the vast expansions of automobile-dependent neighbourhoods have shown to have prolonged effects on resource consumption, carbon emissions, ecosystem devastation, declining health rates, social segregation, and the destruction of available agricultural land in Ontario. Yet these problems are not new. Neither are the solutions. Suburbs have been the centre of angst for many contemporary urban planners in North America for over thirty years. This has been the motivation for theories such as New Urbanism, Smart Growth, and Sustainable Development, three ideologies which have already been integrated into Provincial and Municipal Policies in Ontario. Most of which are focused on general themes of traditional aesthetics and densities of suburban development and most of which have failed to change the form of suburban development in Ontario. In order to explore these issues, this project looked at the current consumption data through ecological footprint analysis. The largest contributors to consumption included housing (energy), mobility, food, and threats to ecosystem services. In order to explore sustainability in the region, these themes were broken down into indicators which would analyse the growth patterns of the city. In order to compare these findings to current and future growth, growth typologies were created and ranked on performance through the process. Based on the performance conclusions, strategies, scenarios, and future recommendations were developed for future growth planning in the region.

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 West Pomerania Voivodeship(Poland), has been already facing the ecological challenges.More than that, through ‘growth paradigm’ also the internalpermineralization and social exclusion. Broadly accepted strategy,based on neoliberal model of economy, focusing on developingregion on its economical level, what has no direct translation intoquality of living of its citizens. Dependence, lack of resilience andso called developing ‘undevelopment’ (Sowa, 2011) addressingneed of search for strategies ‘beyond growth’ (Ciesiółka, Motek,Kołsut, Stryjakiewicz, & Kudłak, 2017). Focusing on landscapeadaptation and strengthening the regional community, thebioregionalism as a framework, has been opening alternativevision for spatial planning, as field responsible for developmentconcepts. Following project, has been focusing on the explorationof the bioregional approach and its possibilities as the spatialplanning framework. Using the ‘research by design’ methodology,the spatial strategy for Szczecin functional area give a possibilityto answer cross-scale problematic (Carr, 2004): ecological (climateadaptation with biodiversity lost) and social (low social capital,exclusion and lack of social services).

“Anyone who only thinks of technology, has not yet recognized that autonomous driving will change our society.” says Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of Daimler AG, and indicates to what the future of mobility will look like. Autonomous and shared mobility is the most talked about topic in the world of transport today. Self-driving shared vehicles will have a huge impact on urban life as they will begin to question the distinction between private and public transportation modes. This mobility trend will help in reducing time of travel with almost 80 percent fewer cars. The reduction in the number of cars on road will lead to changes in environment, traffic, congestion issues, efficiency, cost of road building and maintaining, urban sprawl and parking. With fewer cars, vast amount of land under parking, which is observed quite often in most cities today, could be freed for other public uses, thus changing the urban form of the city as we know it. Therefore, it is time for Transport Planners and Urban Designers to concentrate on this field of development and investigate the possible impact of Autonomous mobility on the city and space to reap maximum benefits in future. This project will explore the consequences of this mobility trend through scenario based studies with a thorough analysis of the possibilities for the city of Amsterdam and speculate how this will transform the city in future.

Historically, the regional landscape of Lambayeque has mainly been natural, agricultural, rural and lastly, urban. However, economic development, demographic growth and urban expansion have overpowered the more natural domain creating non–dynamic flows within the system, compressing all functions at the city scale, specially in Chiclayo as the capital of the region. Furthermore, due to climate change, natural disasters are getting more acute leaving behind devastated productive land, infrastructure and small rural towns, affecting mostly vulnerable population. Given that almost half of the region is cover by un–built areas with mixed ecological value, this broader –currently disconnected– landscape holds great opportunity as a linking element with the urban tissue, putting forwards the idea for creating symbiotic relations through green and blue multifunctional infrastructure and, at the same time reinforcing the regional identity. From the aforementioned context, the urgency for an integrative planning comprising urban, rural and natural landscapes arise. Due to the importance of agriculture not just in the economic dimension, but in the regional idiosyncrasy, productive lots hold the capacity to be integrated into the proposed green and blue initiative re–drawing the inherent connection between wilderness and, man–made landscapes focusing in gathering spaces, which are mainly non–existent within city boundaries. Furthermore, the territorial understanding is comprised by three natures, the first one refers to wilderness landscapes, the second one to man–made landscapes and the third one to ‘highly designed’ landscapes, where the third nature is understood as a complex intertwining of ecological elements, communities, cultural services and flows through processes of space & time.

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 condition and the processes that have led to its existence, this thesis generates, optimizes and evaluates several options for a new centrality and the transit links needed to support them. In this process, a network analysis carried out in Python forms a central element to concretely understand the complexity of London’s system of station areas. Subsequently Woolwich, the most fitting of the options reviewed, is further elaborated through a development strategy comprising the local, regional and governance actions needed to create the conditions for, and providing guidance of, its development into a new centrality.

Gated communities exist in most urbanized contexts around the world and San José, Costa Rica is not the exception. Following the discourse of insecurity and the claim of building community with-in the confinement of the gates, new developments are constructed with a peripheral wall. As gated communities diversify to all available markets they have self-segregated from the city. The result is a city composed by clusters of enclaves separated by functions thus, car dependent and in detriment of the public space. Under this condition this thesis research will focus on possible spatial strategies to modify public spaces with the aim to allow for and facilitate social interactions in areas that are dominated by gated communities. Using as a starting point the understanding that public spaces mediate between the private spaces, thus having an important role in the confronting process of socio-spatial fragmentation and that the promotion of public spaces can address the imbalance manifested by the privatization of public spaces (Madanipour, 1999).

The motivation for this project, comes through personal experience of being raised in the city of Delhi. The city which ones was known for its plush gardens, old markets and famous public squares. The economic liberation of 1992 and unprecedented growth made Delhi victim of its own success. The lack of vision on part of understanding migration to the city, transit system neglecting the public transport, promoting cars as the central way of commute and through pressure of becoming a global city has manifested in major urban issues. The brutal systematic expulsion of the urban poor from right to being a part of the city through re-allocation, to heavy infrastructural investment, congested roads and polluted environment, political polarisation, promises to bring the city to its knees and rob the way of life of its citizens. The often reactionary transport strategies focussing on how to move traffic from point A to B rather than people, often neglected the integration of mobility and urban fabric. Introduction of Delhi Metro, shows promise to shift the commuting model towards public transit; however it faces an uphill struggle as the last mile connectivity and future technology such as sharing, electrification and automation are not taken on board that promise to make moving in the city efficient, clean and pleasant. This graduation project, Delhi/ Great City…..Terrible Place…. would like to focus on shifting the current paradigm and oversee a transition for a more inclusive future mobility system projecting for a newer vision, which promises to formulate a path for a cohesive and an accessible urban realm that could bring the city back to its liveable condition, where people could, socially, economically and environmentally thrive.