Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. This makes them centres of resource consumption and waste production. Sustainable development is seen as an opportunity to respond to the consequences of urbanisation and climate change. In recent years the concepts of circularity and urban symbiosis have emerged as popular strategies to develop sustainable urban areas. An example is the experimental project “Straat van de Toekomst”, implementing a circular strategy based on the Greenhouse Village concept. This concept implements circular systems for new ways of sanitation, heat and cold storage and greenhouse-house symbiosis. Although many technological artefacts have to be developed for these sustainable solutions, integrating infrastructural systems asks for more than just technological innovation. A socio-cultural change is needed in order to reach systems integration. The institutional part of technological transitions has been underexposed over the past few years. Besides the fact that systems integration is a relatively new concept, challenges regarding the process towards it have been mainly focussed towards the technological side. There is a lack of a clear answer on what institutional challenges and opportunities emerge during the process of systems integration, as well as a lack of knowledge on its implementation in urban area development. In order to analyse the process of systems integration in urban area development, the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework of Ostrom is used. The framework enables us to identify the influence of important variables on the decision making process. It consists of three exogenous variables (biophysical/ material conditions, attributes of the community and rules) that influence an action arena (action situation and participants) and provides handles to identify interactions and analyze these interactions through evaluative criteria. A comparative case-study is performed into three cases in the Netherlands: Cityplot in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam; Waterschoon in Noorderhoek, Sneek and EVA Lanxmeer in Culemborg. These were selected on the criteria of encompassing a project integrating infrastructural systems from the “Straat van de Toekomst” and being an urban area development.

With smart governance, citizen participation for the delivery of services and the transformation of society to a participation society, there is an increased focus of governments on the stimulation of citizen initiatives and the usage of their knowledge for the delivery of services. What is seen more and more nowadays is that online platforms are introduced which collect, connect and help citizen initiatives for the city. Not only governments benefit from the interaction with citizens and citizen initiatives, the initiatives often need the local government for the realization of the initiative. However, for a lot of citizen initiatives, the current revenue-models and legal & bureaucratic systems are not always suitable for the citizen initiatives. So, there is a mismatch between the government and its governance and the pursuit of citizen initiatives. Besides, governments are rather slow in adapting and utilizing certain platforms. So, local governments have to find ways to guide the organization through the process of necessary change in order to be able to stimulate citizen initiatives. However, there is a lack of usable mechanism and frameworks that give insight in and promote bottom-up collaboration and participation. Hence, insight is needed in the organizational structure of local governments for the stimulation of citizen initiatives. Besides, insight is needed in the (possibilities of) online platforms for citizen initiatives and the usage and added value of the platforms. This research combines an extensive literature review on smart governance, citizen engagement and literature on citizen initiatives and online platforms with an empirical study that follows municipalities and online platforms for citizen initiatives in the Netherlands and examines the case studies on six elements: strategy, technology, organization, people, environment & success. Besides, the research includes an analysis of the usage of online platforms for citizen initiatives and their impact on the built environment. The main goal of the research is to provide recommendations on how local governments can stimulate citizen initiatives.

Many countries have committed themselves to the target for a circular economy (CE) in 2050. In this transition, the construction sector is important. One of the tools governments can use to stimulate circular building, is by incorporating circular tender criteria in land tendering. This thesis aims to improve circular land tendering requests by giving an insight in municipal land tendering goals and the translation of these goals in tender proposals. The current state of circularity in land tendering is studied by a case study of four cases. Subsequently, the findings from these cases are verified and refined in interviews with expert in the field of circular land tendering. This leads to two sets of recommendations: a land tender process and tender criteria. The circular land tendering process consists of six steps: - CE tender policy, where the available policy regarding circular land tendering must be studies - Context, where the context must be studied - Project goals, where three or four project goals must be defined, which are pursued in the tender. To stimulate circularity, this must be one of the core aims. - Tender procedure, where the best procedure is selected, which must incorporate a dialogue - Tender criteria, where tender goals are translated into awarding criteria, either quantitative or qualitative. - Awarding & control: Where the contract is drawn up and enforced. The step of tender criteria has been further explored, where criteria for circular material use and adaptive building are designed.

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to research the potential of smart tools in the increasingly dynamic used campus workplace from a user perspective, to provide the campus manager with information on both the smart tool product and the smart tool implementation process. Methodology: The currently used smart tools are explored by filling out a standardized form. The in-depth case studies are conducted following the user journey approach. By drawing a timeline of a day and mapping the different events with associated feelings, an in-depth view of the users’ day can be captured. Findings: The findings show 9 different smart tools functions. Within these groups, smart tools differ in terms of level of accuracy and combination of provided functions. The user journeys present the diversity in smart tool requests that users can have, which is strongly related to the provided workplace. Based on the findings, implications for the campus manager are summarized in an ambition framework, which presents four strategies to approach a smart tool project. Practical implications: The findings from this research are based on the campus manager perspective and therefore provide implications for the campus manager. Originality: The paper provides insights in several smart tool projects. As still many smart tool projects are not considered to be successful after implementation, information is needed to guide campus manager throughout this process.

An exploratory case study research into possible forms of governance in shrinking urban areas.

Cities today account for approximately 75% of the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. The process of urbanization increases emissions and places an increasing pressure on resources and livability in urban areas. While challenged with the effects of climate change, governments show increasing interest in integrating sustainable development in urban policy. Circular Economy (CE) is proposed as a sustainable development strategy for policy makers. CE is a relatively new introduced concept to deal with resource depletion and efficient energy usage by adapting principles (reuse – reduce – recycle) and strategies. However, too often governments fail to operationalize CE in urban areas. This research introduces implementation of CE in urban planning, as referred to Circular Urban Area Development (CUAD). A conceptual framework of CUAD is developed, based on a literature review of CE and sustainable urban area development. This lead to the formulation of four categories of urban planning (1) economic experience, (2) households, (3) public space and (4) infrastructure and mobility. These categories are interconnected through flows of resources and energy. Additionally, three layers (micro-, meso-, and macro-level) of CE implementation strategies and policy are incorporated in the framework. The framework is built upon findings, tools and methodologies of three research domains, namely: (1) urban metabolism, (2) stakeholder analysis and (3) future studies. The CUAD conceptual framework is defined and tested on a single case-study at the Binckhorst, The Hague. The Binckhorst is an existing business area which is selected by the local government for a transition towards a circular working-living area. An analysis is done to the current state of the Binckhorst. Some conclusions can be made concerning the Binckhorst. With the transition of the Binckhorst, the landscape of the stakeholders as well as the flows will change drastically. The residential units will strongly increase, leading to a shift in needs from the economic experience, public space and infrastructure and mobility. The three levels provide insights in modelling the flows and stakeholders on the appropriate levels and the complexity of closing loops of resources and energy. Observing the process of the backcasting analysis for the Binckhorst, provides the suggestion that implementing CE requires a vision and ambition from the most important stakeholder: the municipality of The Hague. It is suggested the municipality first sets out its ambition and specific goals, followed by involvement and starting the dialogue with stakeholders. A distinction is made between structural tools and process tools. The literature and the field work point out that implementing CE is a process than a state of affairs. The traditional themes of urban planning are central to the framework. The question is whether these themes should be central point of focus for the framework. Additionally, by introducing a third categorization of the urban planning themes, besides the flows and stakeholder, integration points lack.

This report presents my graduation research toward a BOLD-driven method which uses the triangle relationship between the project developer, transportation and Big Open Linked Data in the process of monitoring and implementing ambitions for residential project developments. The research is conducted for my graduation at the Technical University of Delft, within the Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences of the Master Track Management in the Built Environment. It is intriguing how massive the amount of available data and different data sources is nowadays. The amount and, more important, the quality of this data increases rapidly. While big data already seems to be a hot topic for businesses, this data is currently not (often) used or implemented correctly within the built environment. This research shows how (big) data-analytics can influence residential project developments and issues concerning transportation within the city. The key points of the ambitions regarding transportation of the municipality of Amsterdam are ambiguous since it is not clearly stated what the city defines as a solution for the mobility issues. Project development could be useful for implementing the ambitions since project developments change (small) parts of the city. Nonetheless, transportation does not seem to be a very important topic in the development brief. It is furthermore not analysed what impact new developments have on transportation. Therefore a BOLD-driven method is needed to make the transportation issues more tangible. Within this research the main question is stated as follows:How can the triangle relation between project development, transportation and Big Open Linked Data be used in the process of monitoring and implementing ambitions for residential project developments? This research is conducted from the point of view of the project developer. The goal is to give a better understanding of how project developers could make use of the BOLD-driven method in a new residential project development. The answer could stimulate project developers to manage, classify and structure Big Open Linked Data in such a way BOLD can contribute to new projects. This research is an explorative research on the topics of BOLD, transportation and project development.

Circular building has been increasing in popularity over several years. The idea being that we should not use resources only once and then discard them, but continue using them in new products. The construction industry has responded to this by designing 'circular' buildings that can be disassembled at the end of their functional life. This leaves the question open of what to do with the current buildings stock. Since the building stock only grows with approximately 1% a year, the lion's share of buildings that will be demolished in the next 50 years has already been built. This research explores five cases that are trying to solve this issue in different ways. The case studies are used as a basis to identify drivers, barriers, and opportunities for circular demolition and component reuse. The main drivers are environmental, societal, and behavioural in nature. Whereas the main barriers are economic, behavioural, and governmental. Opportunities for entrepreneurs and governments have been identified to overcome these barriers.

Global trends such as digitalization and the Internet of Things have influenced cities and the lives of residents deeply in recent years. In this digital age, cities turn toward SMART solutions, where they ultimately hope to find new innovative ways of accommodating their citizen’s fundamental needs such as clean drinking water, efficient sewage systems, road traffic and logistical systems or fire and flood control. On the one hand digitalization offers so far unexplored opportunities. On the other hand new issues, such as cyber security and privacy need to be addressed. Apart from these new developments, there are long-standing challenges and the question of who the city belongs to, which are furthering the prevailing inequality in cities and metropolitan areas. These issues are reflected in socio-economic segregation, meaning the widening gap between rich and poor, and the development of ‘concentration areas’, which are the result of economic disadvantage and social inequality. This research aims at unravelling the benefits of the digital age with regard to managing and enhancing urban dynamics on a very local scale. Here, big data offers the opportunity of retrieving real-time data with regard to the city and its residents, on a detailed scale, which enables the study of intrinsic social structures of neighbourhoods. Information on the complexity of social urban dynamics is essential in decision making processes of urban developments and construction projects. Especially since redevelopment projects have become the answer to the long-standing challenges cities are faced with. The scope of the following study has been framed within the context of redevelopment projects in Amsterdam, observing the outcome of so-called ‘state-led gentrification projects’ and exploring the opportunities big data holds to function as a decision making support in managing and enhancing urban development and construction processes of the built environment.

Projected rapid urbanization in African cities is posed to put immense pressure on existing neoliberal urban planning strategies as practised in primary cities and metropolitan regions across Sub-Saharan Africa. This is despite the visible shortcomings of these neoliberal urban development models in delivering the required human development alongside economic growth, specifically for majority of the urban residents in African cities - the urban poor. The political, external agency of cities to global economies at the expense of the internal cultural-economic capacities of local communities continues to propagate inequality, with the urban poor being the most affected by these unjust systems. Continued rural-urban migration, and the growth of the peripheries in urban areas, has seen reduced productivity in traditional integrated agroecological lifestyles and this is unfortunately happening against weakened industrial and manufacturing industries within local urban contexts while propagating a producer-service industry that has fewer opportunities for the rapidly increasing vulnerable populations. The witnessed result of this for the urban peripherals is a growing impermanence of urban lifestyles and the persistence of rural-urban links, as not only escapes from the terror of rigid developmental states mindsets, but also as crucial links for producer-consumer relationships in the splintered regional food system. Unfortunately, the current governance impetus is the propagation of neoliberal models of modernization and gentrification of the urban poor, putting a strain on this crucial cross territorial relationships that sustain urban life. This rural-urban relationships therefore begin to expose the urgent need for reconciling production and consumption landscapes within sustainable city-region governance and planning practices in order to advocate for just urbanisation processes that caters to all populations. This research, critically analyses the symbiotic relationship between the current informal urbanisation structures prevalent in primary cities through the case study of Nairobi, and specifically within the peripherals, and their culturaleconomic identities associated with rural-urban transitory patterns. This investigation makes an attempt to reconnect the future of Kenyan urbanisation to social-cultural production capacities and processes as advocated by critical spatial production and governance literature. Through the main stay of Kenya’s economy - agriculture- and the critical need for sustainable transitions in agricultural and urbanisation systems, we suggest a reconciliation between the emerging social movement of agroecological urbanism at a city-region scale and the adaptiveness of prevalent cultural-economic rural-urban relationships, to suggest a regional, inclusive and adaptive approach to planning practice and governance.

The Paris Agreement set goals to minimize global warming by reducing CO2 emissions. In the Netherlands, the Paris Agreement is translated into policies that aim for circularity and sustainability at different governmental levels. These policies are directed at the sustainability transitions within different fields, such as the built environment. The construction sector is responsible for high levels of CO2 emissions, however, there is a big housing shortage in the Netherlands and the aim is to construct 900.000 new houses by the end of 2030. This challenge requires a transition to a more sustainable way of constructing, to stay below the critical threshold of 1.5 °C global warming. The transition from traditional housing constructions to timber constructions can arguably be a solution to this challenge. To accelerate this transition, the Metropole Region of Amsterdam (MRA) has written a covenant that aims to construct 20% of the total housing production in the MRA by timber, by 2025. This is a high ambition, as currently only some pilot projects are constructed out of timber. While the covenant might give body to this transition in the MRA, there are still a lot of questions about how different policy instruments can foster the timber transition in the MRA. Many studies have been conducted on transitions and innovation policies, and affluent policy instruments for the transition of innovations are presented in literature. However, literature lacks in presenting how a combination of different policy instruments can foster a sustainability transition. This research, which is case study based, therefore researches the different policy instruments that are or can be implemented to foster the transition of timber constructions in the MRA. The literature study presents the theories that make up the theoretical framework and give a deeper understanding of the concepts that are used. The empirical research consists of a document analysis, a stakeholder analysis, interviews with stakeholders and an expert session for validation. The stakeholders within the empirical research are stakeholders that are actively involved in the timber transition in the MRA. This research finally gives answer to the question ‘How can a combination of policy instruments foster the transition to timber housing constructions in the MRA?’. It contributes to the existing literature on policy instruments for transitions by providing concrete methods and an operationalization of the analytical framework for the development of a combination of policy instruments for the timber transition. Furthermore, this research provides policymakers with recommendations on the development of a combination of policy instruments for the timber transition, as well as for sustainability transitions in general. Lastly, this research contributes to broadening the knowledge on the timber transition, as much is yet unknown and there is a great demand for more knowledge on this topic.

Nationale opgaven zoals het woningbouwbeleid, de energietransitie en klimaatadaptatie zijn vraagstukken die door regionale instanties concreet moeten worden gemaakt in samenhang met de vraagstukken van de regio zelf. De regio, het niveau tussen de gemeenten en de provincie, heeft meestal geen duidelijke bestuurlijke grens en geen formele plaats in het Nederlandse bestuur. In het proefschrift is gezocht naar de invloed van de provincie als regionale gebiedsautoriteit in een omgeving waarin diverse publieke en private partijen samenwerken en maatschappelijke organisaties hun stem laten horen. Het onderzoek is gericht op gebieden tussen grote steden waar een aanmerkelijke verstedelijking, ingebed in groen- en waterstructuren, was voorzien. Plannen en planprocessen zijn geanalyseerd, net als het handelen van de provincie in drie regio’s: de regio Rotterdam-Zoetermeer-Gouda, het gebied tussen Arnhem en Nijmegen en de regio Eindhoven-Helmond. Het proefschrift laat onder meer zien dat planologische sturing een zwakker instrument is dan financiële sturing. Na de decentralisatie van ruimtelijke ordening en landinrichting is de invloed van de rijksoverheid op regionale gebiedsontwikkeling groot gebleven. Voorts blijkt dat planconcepten in de praktijk flexibel zijn. Als de uitvoering aan de orde komt neemt het risico toe dat het planconcept uit elkaar valt. Het onderzoek toont aan dat de provincie haar rol als regionale gebiedsregisseur actiever zou kunnen invullen. De Omgevingswet zou dat mogelijk moeten maken. @en