In the current era of global warming and urbanisation, it has become imperative to change the urban rhythm. Our current mobility habits make human and nature unhappy and unhealthy. This problem is apparent in sub-urban neighbourhoods, that often experience low connectivity and low local vitality. The 15-minute city is a model that puts focus on vicinity in the city. In the 15-Minute city, all urban facilities needed to live, learn and thrive are within a 15-minute reach by foot or bicycle from home.
In my graduation project, I research how the neighbourhoods in the periphery of Rotterdam could be designed for slow traffic and local activity. I do this by implementing a certain concept, the 15-Minute City, in a multitude of environments, the peripheral neighbourhoods of Rotterdam, which results in an understanding of the stretch of the concept and the meaning for the city. Key themes are accessibility, density and diversity. Through scenario construction, two future 15-minute cities are explored, resulting in a design strategy for the future urban rhythm of peri-urban areas.

The station location is typically characterised by its dual nature as a semi-public piece of real estate. On the one hand, it is used by its owner to achieve its corporate objectives, also in terms of feasibility. On the other hand, it is a place which is accessible to all and serves the societal and urban needs in terms of transport, activities, encounters and many more. In current urban developments, these places in the city are changing rapidly. The concept of transit-oriented development describes the reason why this is happening. Due to the high demand for space in the city, the quest for available land often leads to places that are both available and well accessible. Station locations are examples of these places. Consequently, many new stakeholders are engaged in station location developments, but many rather often follow their own aims and objectives, and substantiate their decisions with own interpretations and assumptions. This leads to uncoordinated collaborations with conflicts of interests. This study wants to clear some of the air in this respect. However, from which perspective should one observe the station location to decide which elements deserve attention? The user has a central position in this regard. Most importantly, their demands should be taken into consideration in order to provide successful real estate. Therefore, this study positions the user of a station location as a central point of attention. More specifically, the definition of the user has been narrowed down to the traveller which encounters various elements at the station location during their door-to-door journey. The study is executed by reviewing thirty Dutch station locations and statistically compare them to each other and to the appreciation of travellers at those stations. As a result, critical elements at station locations have been identified that relate to the enhancement of the traveller experience. During station location development processes, the output of this research can be used by actors to get a clearer view on the demands by the main user. Stakeholders should always critically review this information and assess whether and to what extent their current real estate supply should be adjusted in order to meet these demands.

Urbanisation is a global trend that continues to occur as the percentage will rise up for 55% to 68% in 2050 (United Nations, 2018). This movement of society towards the urban environment is clearly evident in the Netherlands too, particularly in the country’s four major cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague. Due to its increasing growth, one-thirds of the total Dutch population is expected to be living in these four major cities in 2030 (CBS & PBL, 2016). Research, however, shows that the market currently takes up solely a quarter of the Dutch residential demands within the city centres (Verheul & Daamen, 2017). This generates the need for cities to further develop their urban areas and therefore large transformation areas must be addressed (Brink, 2017). Taking into account the potential of brownfield sites in the Netherlands, these areas deserve attention and priority in the short and medium-long term. However, there is not enough knowledge available on operational level to stimulate their redevelopments. Iconic projects are often deliberately proposed by municipalities for their catalytic function, as they can generate economic and socio-cultural spillovers and could stimulate area redevelpoments (Doucet 2010; Verheul, 2013). Research into the influence of iconic projects has been done for years already, however insights into the particular conditions that have these catalysing spillover effects on surrounding developments are lacking. As a result, this research aims to gain better understanding about what conditions of iconic projects could incentivise developers to (re)develop in brownfield areas. The conditions of iconic projects that could generate these incentivising spillovers have been explored by doing three in-depth holistic case studies. Therefore, both retrospective and prospective case studies have been conducted on brownfield areas in Rotterdam. A ‘one of best practice’ case study has been selected for the retrospective case study (Case I: Wilhelminaper) to better understand the catalysing effects of iconic projects by initially reflecting on an already successfully redeveloped brownfield area. As sources of error due to confounding bias are common in retrospective case studies, the findings have been compared with case study findings from a current brownfield redevelopment (Case II: Katendrecht). As no successes have yet been achieved, the prospective case study (Case III: Merwe-Vierhavens) declares possible confounding or biases of the retrospective case study and has in particularly been used to draw an advice for future and contemporary brownfield redevelopments. After conducting document studies on the brownfields redevelopments and semi-structured interviews with project developers and managers active in the case study areas, incentivising conditions could be identified. All pre-defined conditions of iconic projects have incentivised real estate developers and thus all pre-defined conditions contribute to catalysing surrounding developments. However, all to a certain degree. The functional and sociocultural characteristics of iconic projects are most important incentivising conditions for surrounding (re)developments. These are followed by the location and image of the iconic projects, that to a certain degree have incentivised (re)developments too. Least incentivising conditions of iconic projects are the development process, scale, fame of the architect and the physical characteristics of the iconic project. As the uniqueness and innovativeness of the iconic projects in the case studies have derived from the other conditions, these are not explicitly appointed an incentivising condition, which nevertheless does not mean that they could not incentivise (re)developments. The conclusions must however be nuanced. One should consider the fact that each brownfield has different interests as well as other concerns. As a consequence, the aforementioned conclusions can not be provided through a concrete list of preconditions necessary for iconic projects to successfully catalyse brownfield redevelopments.Regarding the renewal of Katendrecht, a note must be made with regard to the extent to which single iconic projects have catalysed surrounding (re)developments. Prior to the iconic developments, the municipality of Rotterdam, Woonstad Rotterdam and Proper Stok/Heijmans actually laid the foundation for these developments. Even in difficult and uncertain economic times, these parties have continued to the commitment to revitalise Katendrecht. This consequently enabled the development of iconic projects, which again catalysed further developments.Regarding the redevelopment of the Wilhelminapier, it must be noted that many government investments preceded and only later, private investments followed. As a consequence, it is clear that certain conditions of iconic projects indeed catalysed surrounding developments, however it is unsure it these projects would have been developed and thus functioned as catalysers too without the preceded public investments. These public investments, however, have been a very strategic move as they have started mutual reinforcement.In other words, the one project development functioned as a catalyst again for the next one. Actually all projects thus have had a catalysing effect on the surrounding developments in their own way. Insights in the conditions that contribute to incentivising real estate developers to develop, offer municipalities better perspective on design principles and governance models that could be strategically deployed when tackling brownfield redevelopments. Through finding the conditions that could incentivise developers, the first preliminary steps in the direction of meeting the short to medium-long term residential demand in urbanised areas can be set in stone.

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 housing crisis by incentivizing private development through various methods, such as changing zoning laws and cutting red tape for access to abandoned lands, as a way to inject steroids into the housing market (Kaysen, 2018). This has unfortunately caused issues such as gentrification and speculative development, which has led to the disenfranchisement of low-income inhabitants in the city (Kaysen, 2018). These policies have marginalized people by either forcing the poor to either live in the periphery of the city, or be crammed into social housing projects that were built more than half a century ago. This is worrisome due to the fact that these aged dwellings display a variety of health and safety issues that the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is having a hard time managing. The low-income families which rely on these projects have a hard time paying the minimum rent to begin with, and when you couple this with unacceptable living conditions, you end up with the spatial manifestation of an increasing divide between the rich and poor which now defines New York City. What is more shocking is that when you look back in history, the social housing projects were originally seen as a solution to poverty and slumification, but they ended up just being vertical versions of the slums which they took place of (Ferré-Sadurní, 2018). In order to help these disenfranchised people living in the projects, there must be an effort in place to help increase their quality of life. In order to achieve this, the monofunctionality of their public space needs to be made more functionally diverse. This is because the lack of diversity in both social and programmatic elements results in low public activity, which in turn leads to crime and vandalism due to a lack of self-awareness which tends to not exist in places of high public activity (Jacobs, 1961). In addition to this, the problem of public space is exasperated by the design philosophy that was used to create the projects. Planners used the International Style, which was a popular urbanist theory during the time that the dwellings were created. By clearing the tenement slums that were defined by a spatial hierarchy created by the street grid of New York City, he accused the planners of intentionally destroying the rich hierarchy and variety that existed in the contextual public realm (Kunstler, 2004). He also argues that the high-rises of the projects themselves destroyed any sense of human scale, which in combination of his other concerns, eradicated the inhabitants connection to the public realm (Kunstler, 2004). By looking at these failures of the social housing projects, a transformational framework needs to be produced that acknowledges these issues of monofunctionality, scale, and safety. This framework should also act as a blueprint of rehabilitation for all NYCHA projects, including what needs and characteristics need to be created in order to activate a public space that increases the inhabitants quality of life. By providing a framework that brings the “soul” of public space in these projects back to life, the original intent of the projects - or the promise it made to the people who would live in them - can be met and achieved.

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

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’s future. In an attempt to reach high levels of urban competitiveness, the municipality of The Hague has recently announced its plans for the development of an innovation district.

Objective: The objective of this research is to intensively analyse a specific case (the innovation district in The Hague) and, in doing so, add to the scientific literature concerning innovation districts. By performing an empirical analysis about the demands of different groups in an innovation district and the ambitions and policies on the steering side, this research attempts to clarify what the physical needs are of specific groups of actors within the context of the innovation district in The Hague. What is more, it attempts to draw conclusions regarding the relationship between physical interventions and the development of innovation districts.

Methods: This thesis is divided into five main components: an introduction, a theoretical framework, a case analysis, the conclusions and recommendations and a reflection. The methods that have been used in this research are a literature review, interviews and a questionnaire. The quantitative data of the questionnaire has been statistically analysed by calculating the median and the inter-quartile range of each variable. What is more, frequency tables have been developed to create a more detailed image of the results of each variable. Pearson’s r and Pearson’s chi-square method have finally been used to discover significant differences and correlations.

Results: The results of the case study indicate several aspects that have high levels of importance to specific groups within the district, while others show lower levels of importance. The results of the levels of satisfaction of the different aspects within the district also show varying results for different sub-areas. The analysis of the 22@ district in Barcelona has also revealed a number of physical interventions related to the development of the district.

Conclusion: This research has resulted in a number of conclusions relating to the development of innovation districts. First, municipal leadership appears to be key in the early stages of a top-down initiated innovation district. Then, it has become apparent that the needs of the users of innovation districts go beyond sheer accessibility. Walkability, bike-ability and the presence of hospitality services are nearly equally important. However, user groups also have specific needs that other groups do not have. Therefore, when the vision is to create a mixed environment, it is important to consider these needs, otherwise innovation districts run the risk of having dispersed user groups. Another conclusion is that physical proximity does not guarantee learning (there is a need for common ground) and that physical conditions alone are not sufficient for innovation to take place. Finally, the cases studied in this research have shown that the brand ‘innovation district’ is being used by cities as a model to strive for, rather than a label that corresponds with the physical and economic situation at hand.

Context – Within the Netherlands, an urgent mismatch between supply and demand in the residential sector results in adverse effects such as high house prices and reduced affordability. This mismatch is anticipated to grow further due to an increasing number of households (between 300,000 and 1,000,000 until 2040) and the many barriers in the development process of inner city locations. The Dutch residential development sector stands for a great challenge.
Objective – The objective of this thesis is to explore the functioning and possibilities of revolving funds for inner city development. The hypothesis of the research is therefore that a revolving fund provides a solution towards overcoming (some of) the barriers in urban development, particularly in the inner city.
Methods – The research is divided in three components: literature review, empirical study through a comparative case study, and the translation from the case study towards a revolving fund design for residential development in inner city locations.
Results – The case study has established that there are six structural elements that characterize revolving funds: goal focus, goal limitation, size of the fund organisation, distance to the responsible governmental body, risk acceptance and steering ability. A variant study shows different possibilities of the design of a revolving fund with different characteristics in regard to the six structural elements.
Conclusion - In general, the results imply that the use of a revolving fund can stimulate certain residential development projects that experience financing issues. The study has also established that there is a support base for a revolving fund in inner city development, both from a public and private of view. A revolving fund for inner city development should have an equal focus on societal and financial yield (goal focus) and should have a medium goal limitation. In terms of organisation, the fund should have a rather small organisation in relation to the fund volume and should be sufficiently distanced from the responsible governmental body. Regarding the financial structure, the risk acceptance should be relatively high to carry out the predefined tasks of the revolving fund. This results in a revolving fund through which governmental objectives can be carried out with high steering ability.
Keywords: inner city development, revolving fund, planning instruments, comparative case study