This is the full report of Work Package 1 of the InPUT project. In this report, we analyse the challenges and potentials for the implementation of 15-minute city principles in four peri-urban regions in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Portugal. Alongside that, we learn from lived experiences and expressed priorities to understand what matters to peri-urban societies and what accessibility, proximity and liveability actually mean in these locations. Our research includes a spatial analysis based on a newly-developed typology of peri-urban areas, a socio-spatial analysis based on focus groups, and a governance analysis based on document analysis and discussions with policymakers. ... Read more

Dit rapport is opgesteld in het kader van het InPUT-project (Engaging Places and Communities for Inclusive Peri-Urban Transitions), mede mogelijk gemaakt door het Driving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership, een Europees partnerschap onder het R&I-frameworkprogramma Horizon Europe mede gefinancierd door de Europese Unie. De content van dit rapport is allen geproduceerd door de auteurs van het InPUT team. Uitspraken in dit rapport zijn die van de auteurs en reflecteren niet de riving Urban Transitions (DUT) Partnership en de Europese Unie. ... Read more

Repair is a critical element of the circular society, enabling extended product lifespans and reducing material waste. In the context of the 'Directive on repair of goods', this chapter investigates the spatial facilitation of repairing consumer goods in two case studies - London Southwark and Amsterdam Noord. What types of repair spaces are there, how spatially accessible are they for residents and what policies support them?

Findings show that repair remains concentrated in transitional industrial buildings, plots and areas, often under threat from redevelopment. Amsterdam offers more explicit policy support for circular uses, while London lacks clear spatial planning strategies for repair. Cities can support circular transitions by recognising repair as essential urban infrastructure and embedding it more directly into spatial planning and circular-economy policies. This requires protecting affordable, adaptable spaces for repair activities and integrating repair into community centres, libraries, and regeneration projects. Encouraging co-location and shared spaces can improve affordability and accessibility, particularly for community-led and informal repair practices. Expanding policy definitions of repair to reflect everyday forms of maintenance and reuse would further strengthen repair cultures and help make circularity part of daily urban life. ... Read more

The article explores the role public space plays in providing care for fluidly housed youth. These young adults are experiencing fluctuating conditions of homelessness, moving between couch‐surfing, staying in overcrowded or informally occupied spaces, and sometimes experiencing periods of rooflessness. Using an adapted typology of homelessness and building on fundamental human needs and the process of homemaking in public, the article identifies three overarching socio‐spatial needs of fluidly housed youth. Through a mixed‐methods approach, the article uncovers three spatial potentials that enable fluidly housed youth to activate and adapt urban space through processes of radical care, and identifies urban spaces suitable for building infrastructures of care that meet needs along a gradient of privacy. This way, it links socio‐spatial needs, socio‐spatial affordances, and the processes of care that connect both. Understanding this logic provides examples of careful planning that create urban space affordances that activate and adapt to shifting needs. While this article does not claim to solve the housing crisis, it offers a starting point for how we can centre the everyday practices of fluidly housed youth and create infrastructures of care that better meet shifting needs in urban space. ... Read more

Basisbegrippen architectuur, landschapsarchitectuur, stedenbouw biedt een introductie op zestien fundamentele begrippen voor de (toekomstige) ruimtelijk ontwerper. Basisbegrippen zijn de sleutel tot het verwoorden en verbeelden van ideeën en denkbeelden binnen de bouwkunde. Een goede beheersing van de veelgebruikte begrippen binnen de vakgebieden architectuur, landschapsarchitectuur en stedenbouw maakt het mogelijk om in een ontwerpproces te communiceren met vakgenoten, opdrachtgevers, (toekomstige) gebruikers en het grote publiek.

Basisbegrippen architectuur, landschapsarchitectuur, stedenbouw is samengesteld door het team ‘Grondslagen’ verbonden aan de faculteit Bouwkunde van de TU Delft. Het handboek bevat bijdragen van Klaske Havik, Willemijn Wilms Floet, Saskia de Wit, Gregory Bracken, Chris Woltjes, Robin Ringel. ... Read more

Research on circular development in China’s urban planning remains limited, particularly regarding marginalized groups’ actions. This study addresses the gap by examining circular practices within informal food systems in Chengdu’s urban villages. It highlights residents’ bottom-up initiatives in food production and consumption and their interactions with the broader urban context. Using street interviews and Research through Design, it develops community-based visions to improve these actions and the needed planning tools for implementation. It also explores how circular development could support urban regeneration by recognizing overlooked resources and practices. Semi-structured expert interviews reveal barriers in China’s planning system to accommodate such visions. Findings indicate that local circular actions—driven by local labor and knowledge and efforts to tackle polluted land and idle spaces—offer valuable opportunities for circular development. However, deficiencies in planning tools for spatial planning, waste treatment, land contamination regulation, and vulnerability recognition create barriers to upscaling these initiatives. This study calls for integrating circular development into China’s spatial planning by strengthening top-down tools and fostering grassroots initiatives to promote sustainable resource flows, ecosystem health, and social equity. It also offers broader insights into promoting circular development by recognizing and integrating informal, bottom-up practices in cities undergoing informal settlement regeneration. ... Read more

Although some degree of multi- or interdisciplinarity has been inherent in urbanism education, today, the skills and knowledge for transdisciplinary work are increasingly required from graduates facing the challenges of sustainable urban development in the field. In this article, we show how the master’s programme in urbanism at TU Delft has been tackling this challenge, and we discuss what further steps may be required to achieve the full potential of transdisciplinary education. We present two cases – both elective design courses from the Department of Urbanism – to identify (1) challenges of multidisciplinarity, (2) elements of the current educational setup that contribute to interdisciplinarity, and (3) the potential improvements to transdisciplinary learning. The two cases, both part of research projects carried out in collaboration with practice, show essential features of education that can strengthen the education-research-practice nexus underpinning transdisciplinary practices for sustainable urban development. ... Read more

Deze publicatie is een presentatie van de resultaten van de eerste fase van een research by design project over het thema duurzame transformatie van industriële terreinen in Nederland. Het onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd naar aanleiding van de open oproep Anders Werken aan Wonen van het Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie. Het onderzoek wordt geleid door architectenbureau Dividual in samenwerking met experts van verschillende instellingen. ... Read more

Everyday streets facilitate various activities and movements, both indoors and outdoors. The second section of this book addresses the following question: What is the relationship between the urban form of everyday streets and the activities that occur on them? ... Read more

Everyday streets are both the most used and the most undervalued of cities’ public spaces. They constitute the inclusive backbone of urban life – the chief civic amenity – though they are challenged by optimisation processes. Everyday streets are as profuse, rich and complex as the people who use them; they are places of social aggregation, bringing together those belonging to different classes, genders, ages, ethnicities and nationalities. They comprise not just the familiar outdoor spaces that we use to move and interact and the facades that are commonly viewed as their primary component but also urban blocks, interiors, depths... ... Read more

Streets are where the needs and values of different users and activities come together. Main streets in the Netherlands were either planned in major urban expansions or developed over time in the shape of ribbons upon dykes—‘long lines’ of continuously active streets. This chapter presents two cases from the Amsterdam metropolitan region: vanWoustraat-Rijnstraat, a main street planned as part of an urban expansion, and Westzijde, a main street that developed over time as part of a long line. While vanWoustraat-Rijnstraat is tightly organised and coherent in both appearance and function, Westzijde is characterised by a multitude of different buildings and functions.
This study visualises the spatial-structural qualities that facilitate the evolving economic activities of these two streets. It explores the variation between them by morphological differentiation and determines several spatial characteristics that enable the mix: modularity of the urban plan, complementary ‘front’ and ‘back’ sides, structural coherence and territorial steps between the ‘front’ and ‘back’ sides to buildings, blocks and neighbourhoods. ... Read more

Urban manufacturing and manufacturers play a vital role in delivering circular economy ambitions through processing materials, providing skills and technology for repair or reconditioning goods and the capacity to deliver innovative technology. The transdisciplinary approach of Cities of Making (CoM) puts forward three ways of addressing manufacturing, and by extension, circularity, within urban areas. Central to triangulate the facilitation of urban manufacturing are the perspectives of (1) material flows and technology, (2) spatial design (3) people and networks. The integration of the three pathways requires convergence while retaining the richness of the three perspectives. The challenge is to find a common language that provides a comparable, operative framework for exploring possible solutions. The CoM framework of integration followed three main principles: (1) reducing the complexity of information, (2) reducing the complexity of combinations of possible solutions, and (3), applying an accessible, applicable instrument for the solutions. The resulting pattern language is co-created in a transdisciplinary setting and is also an instrument for the transdisciplinary application. The low threshold accessible system of solutions allows actors from different disciplines to access patterns developed in the context of another discipline and laypeople who are affected or interested to co-create. ... Read more

A large proportion of European inhabitants live in dispersed urban settlements, much of which is labelled as sprawl, defined by monofunctional, low-density areas. However, there is increasing evidence that this may be an overly simplistic way of describing territories-in-between (TiB). This paper defines and maps functional mix in six dispersed urban areas across Europe, applying a method that goes beyond existing land-use-based mixed-use indicators but considers functional mixing on the parcel level. The paper uses data on the location of economic activities and the residential population. It concludes that, in eight cases from four European countries, mixed-use is widespread and that more than 65% of inhabited areas are mixed. Moreover, the paper relates functional mixing to specific settlement characteristics: permeability, grain size, centrality and accessibility, and connectivity. This demonstrates that functional mixing is not the result of local urban morphology or planning instruments, but of the multi-scalar qualities of a location. Therefore, there is a requirement to coordinate planning and design through different scales if mixed-use areas are to be seen as one strategy for achieving greater sustainability in the spatial development of dispersed areas. ... Read more

Wasser Stadt Wien. Eine Umweltgeschichte by G. Haidvogl, F. Hauer, S. Hohensinner, E. Raith, M. Schmid, C. Sonnlechner, C. Spitzbart-Glasl and V. Winiwarter, ZUG Zentrum für Umweltgeschichte, Universität für Bodenkultur, Vienna, Austria, 2019, 495 pp. ISBN 978–3–900932–67–1. ... Read more

This article describes the TU Delft's 2020 experiences during the pandemic in teaching and learning urban design and planning for (post-)COVID-19 times. The article presents the view why, that and how the themes of spatial resilience
and governance resilience should be emphasized in urbanism curriculums. Additionally, it discusses the value of creating well-organized and empathetic online design studios as an inspiring learning environment for both student
and teacher. ... Read more

Planning practice in the Global South often defines a border between formal and informal developments ignoring the complex and nuanced reality of urban practices and, consequently, worsening segregation. This article proposes an alternative view of socio-spatial segregation that shifts the distinction between formal/informal towards one that emphasises access to opportunities and their relationship with the spatial structure of the city. Under this alternative framework, applied to the case of the Valle Amauta neighbourhood in Lima, Peru, we reflect on how socio-economic activities, shaped by spatial conditions and social practices, increase or reduce socio-spatial segregation. Our findings suggest that a shift towards strategies aimed at increasing accessibility to centrality, provided by the density of social and economic activities, could offer new opportunities for planning practice and theory in the Global South. ... Read more

Since the 1970s, cities world-wide have been witness to radical de-industrialisation. Manufacturing was considered incompatible with urban life and was actively pushed out. As economies have grown, public officials and developers have instinctively shifted their priorities to short-term, high-yielding land uses such as offices, retail space and housing. Inner-city growth from New York to London and even Seoul have generally come at the expense of land uses such as manufacturing or logistics. Despite the odds, manufacturing is not in terminal decay in western cities. On the contrary, it is at the opening of a new chapter. Urban manufacturing can help cities to be more innovative, circular, inclusive and resilient. Recently, with increasing interest in the circular economy, with cleaner and more compact technology, with more progressive building codes for mixed use, with increasing awareness of the impacts of social inequality and with a clearer understanding of the value chains between the trade of material and immaterial goods, cities across the world are realising that manufacturing has an important place in the 21st century urban economy. While both enthusiasm for making is increasing and the value of manufacturing is becoming increasingly evident in cities, the topic remains extremely complex and challenging to manage. This book attempts to shed light on the ways manufacturing can address urban challenges, it exposes constraints for the manufacturing sector and provides fifty patterns for working with urban manufacturing. This book has been written as a manual to help politicians, public authorities, planners, designers and community organisations to be able to plan, discuss and collaborate by developing more productive urban manufacturing. The book is split into two parts. We first cover an abridged history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, noting how European cities evolved rapidly by harnessing manufacturing, and then how the late twentieth century led to a radical shift in how cities work and think. We’re now at a crossroads between actors that do not see the need for manufacturing in cities and those that consider it vital for a prosperous urban future. Part of the tension comes from the fact that manufacturing is considered a ‘weak land use’ compared to activities such as real-estate development, which has been considered more financially attractive by many actors in the private and public sector. This real estate-oriented development narrative is increasingly regarded as short-sighted, but will not change without an alternative vision. We have therefore elaborated a narrative on how urban manufacturing responds to four specific challenges facing cities and how in turn manufacturing needs cities. In practice, planning and design for a topic like this is highly challenging. ... Read more

Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and comprehensive descriptions needed by those engaged in urban planning and design practice. To describe contemporary urban forms, which are more diffuse and often elude previous historic typologies, systematic quantitative methods can be useful but, until recently, these have played a limited role in typo-morphological studies. This paper contributes to recent developments in this field by integrating multi-variable geometric descriptions with inter-scalar relational descriptions of urban form. It presents typologies for three key elements of urban form (streets, plots and buildings) in five European cities, produced using statistical clustering methods. In a first instance, the resulting typologies contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of streets, plots and buildings. In particular, the results offer insight into patterns between the types (i.e. which types are found in combination and which not) and provide a new large scale comparative analysis across five European cities. To conclude, a link between quantitative analysis and theory is established, by testing two well-known theoretical propositions in urban morphology: the concept of the burgage cycle and the theory of natural movement. ... Read more

Met het promotie-onderzoek van Birgit Hausleitner keren we terug naar de stedelijke context en in het bijzonder naar de randvoor waarden voor gemengde stedelijkheid. Zij laat zien waar kansen liggen voor functiemenging, ook op plekken waar je die niet verwacht.

Birgit Hausleitner’s doctoral research brings us back to the urban context and in particular to the preconditions for mixed urbanity. She shows us opportunities for function mixing, some in unexpected places.
... Read more

The Cities of Making 'Cities Report', offers an insight into urban manufacturing in three global cities - Brussels, London and Rotterdam. Each city has had a distinctive industrial heritage and is interpreting the future of manufacturing in very different ways. This report exposes unique qualities of each and common trends that may be relevant to many other European cities who are grappling with the future place of making. This chapter looks at the region comprising Rotterdam and The Hague, a richly productive landscape characterised by a vast port, intensive greenhouse based agriculture and urban areas. The recent economic and urban development of this region has resulted in a spatial configuration with unique characteristics, strongly interwoven with each other. Firstly, demand for space has led to the transformation of the region, which has been sculpted, made fit for specific purpose, with barely inches of unproductive land. Secondly, modernist principles introduced new functional zones with segregated areas specialising in mechanical manufacturing, chemical processing, logistics, to housing and leisure, resulting in a particular composition of building and urban areas. Thirdly, as a consequence of ongoing planning and adaptation of this productive environment, socio-economic stratification with a strong spatial manifestation continues to be noticed to this day. The region hosts a vast range of manufacturing. Many of these have emerged from the port and access to goods, resources and an international market such as chemical processing and machine production. Newer forms of manufacturing are spinning out of centres of innovation such as bio-technology and sensors and are showing that the city’s productive base is moving further and further away from the port. As the port itself changes and becomes increasingly automated, it leaves behind vast areas of land. While projected housing demand is putting pressure on the available vacant port areas, there are movements towards districts with new forms of production. Challenged by climate change and international competition, ambitions have been set for a radical transition towards a new economic models such as the Next Economy. The stakes are high for both private and public actors to focus on building out clean energy, resilient high-tech solutions, and radical innovation. However a range of visions and the strategic sectors have resulted in confusion about what should be stimulated and what the city’s new economic profile, regardless of what actually lands on the ground. In the absence of clarity and a holistic approach, the pressure mounts. Providing the desirable Next Economy workforce – those with higher incomes, education, and demands – with suitable housing and attractive urban environments puts in question the region’s economic, social and environmental stability. ... Read more