The inclusive city is explained through Henri Lefebvre's theories of the social space in "The production of space" and "The right to the city". Through his theories, it is thoroughly explained that the people are the essential component of the space and that they are the ones that create the space. This Master thesis, aims to look at the public space in a challenged social context in the deprived area of Carnisse in the South of Rotterdam, and examined how some of the problems faced by the people can be addressed through creating inclusive, public spaces.

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.

Configurational Morphology is a research and design project exploring the potentials of configurational design as a systematic approach to generating site-specific urban form responsive to its environmental, social end economic context. By looking into both the theoretical potentials of configurational thinking as well as its practical application in the form of design experiments, the project manages to paint a comprehensive picture of how a configurational design process could be structured and what benefits it could bring. From its historical precedents and roots in vernacular architecture, through its analytical capacity to abstract and visualise the socio-spatial patterns of existing cities, its applicability as a digital design interface mediating between humans and machines, its compatibility with advanced computational techniques to finally its ability to generate bottom-up adaptive urban form, the experiments reinforce the idea that such a design approach could indeed be possible as well as feasible. Throughout, an underlying theme guides the project; a vision of the future city in which generic cookie-cutter urban fabric is replaced by customised adaptive urban forms of tremendous diversity. With it returns local identity, the richness of spatial experiences, increased performance and sustainability, higher density, increased equality and much more. Simultaneously, traditional socio-spatial structures are deconstructed and can be translated to other previously unimaginable forms such as a high-rise row house or a slab functioning as a courtyard block offering completely new possibilities for urban living. The result is a city of infinite opportunities; a city in which our social patterns, buildings, the environment and the urban fabric again become an indistinguishable whole adapted to contemporary urban life and fit for the future of our society.

The aim of this master thesis is to interrelate integration policies with self-organisation and to find ways for spatial planners to enlarge the role of self-organisation. The role of self-organisation for refugee integration is promising because it has a deep understanding of the spatial context and responds to the local needs. Research about integration policies on the one hand and self-organisation and spatial planning on the other hand puts forward the relevance of spatial planning to complement integration policies with self-organisation, because spatial planning is a way of planning that strives for policy integration and incorporation of the spatial context. Spatial planning has a competence to provide supportive organisational and spatial conditions, although literature research about those conditions for the role of self-organisation in integration policies in particular is hardly present yet. This research investigates organisational and spatial conditions in the context of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. First, this thesis gives a theoretical understanding of refugee integration, integration policies and spatial planning and self-organisation. Then, it explores the complementarities between integration policies and self-organisation by a case-study analysis for Rotterdam. The case-study analysis consists of an analysis of integration policies, of a thematic analysis that analyses common patterns and characteristics of eleven existing self-organised initiatives in Randstad municipalities and of an in-depth case analysis that goes more deeply into the development processes of three initiatives in Rotterdam. Finally, the thesis proposes general principles to enhance the interrelations between integration policies and self-organisation, which are illustrated by a spatial planning strategy for Rotterdam. The results show that integration of refugees takes place in multiple domains simultaneously that require tailor-made support and distinct approaches per domain. The design principles propose that planners define either a policy or a self-organisation approach per domain of integration, in which planners play a collaborating role in the first and a facilitating role in the latter. Accordingly, the principles propose that municipalities coordinate the provision of tailor-made organisational support to self-organisation actors on multiple levels and in multiple domains. Furthermore, the principles propose to provide a network of buildings for self-organisation, consisting of three keystone buildings where initiatives cluster and typical buildings for self-organisation in all neighbourhoods. By deciding on strategic locations where integration is challenging or where relevant actors are located, planners can encourage the emergence and development of self-organisation at desired locations.

The neighborhood of Nieuwland, located in Schiedam, Zuid-Holland is one example of the many post-war neighborhoods the Netherlands offers. It formed the extension of Schiedam’s city center and consisted of a clear functionalist lay-out upon its completion in 1965, characterized by monotony, frugal architecture, and a clear separation of functions and traffic. Although initially inhabited by a relatively homogeneous population of predominantly Dutch working class families, this is not the case currently: after several decades, the population shifted towards a more heterogeneous mix of inhabitants, with a significantly stronger presence of lower income households and households with a migration background. For two reasons, socioeconomic and sociospatial issues increased as a result of this shift. Firstly, because the neighborhood became poorer in general. Secondly, because it became harder for the people of this neighborhood to live together, as the amount of cultural backgrounds and ways of living started to increase.  There have been several plans to mitigate the issues at hand in Nieuwland in the past. It became one of the Vogelaarwijken in 2007 for example. However, things have still not improved as much as in other neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the way we (re)develop neighborhoods in the Netherlands has shifted, as the focus on inner city redevelopment has been growing in contemporary strategies that try to combat national issues like the Dutch housing shortage. Through this we could say that there is a certain necessity to find new ways to effectively redevelop Nieuwland. One innovative approach for this is to get to understand the citizens perspective of the neighborhood, and use this to discover what is not working and what can be improved in Nieuwland. In this graduation project, the fieldwork technique of narrative cartography has been used to attempt to get an interpretation of this citizen perspective. 12 interviews have resulted in that many verbal and visualized stories (through the creation of narrative maps), showcasing how the inhabitants of Nieuwland experience the neighborhood, what their routines look like, how and with whom they interact, and what they would improve.  From this, design principles have been developed that have been applied to redevelopment proposals for the central part of Nieuwland (which is the area where most interviews have been held). Combined with two other important perspectives - that of non-citizen stakeholders (housing association and municipality) and the urban designer - a framework has been developed and used for establishing these design proposals. A general vision for this part of Nieuwland has been created, and focus area have been selected and worked in detail to showcase how delicate, nuanced and feasible interventions based on predominantly the perspective of the current inhabitants of Nieuwland can lead to an inclusive and strategic redevelopment of the neighborhood.

The Netherlands is dealing with two problems. The first is a large housing crisis. Housing is unavailable, unaffordable and lacking in quality and perfomance. There is also a liveability crisis. While the overall liveability score in The Netherlands has been going up in the last two decades, the neighborhood that score the worst have not been able to improve their situation. The most vulnerable group of the population resides in these areas and they are unable to put themselves or their surrounding in a better environment. Post-war neighborhoods consist of a high amount of these low-scoring neighborhood, while at the same time they have a high potential for densfication that would aid in resolving the housing shortage. The question arises how densification can be a catalyst for improving the quality of living in post-war neighborhoods. This thesis investigates the concept of densficitation, its sustainable character and its relationship to improving the quality of living on a spatial and social level. The next chapter looks into the concept of liveability, what it means, what impact it has and what the situation is in The Netherlands. After that, the post-war neighborhood will be researched to gain a better understanding on its problems and potential. The conclusion says that there is definetely a deeply rooted but complex relationship between densification and liveability, one that is far from superficial. By putting clear and strict criteria to the implementation of densification, it is possible to have a positive effect on the quality of living in post-war neighborhoods. These criteria evolve on three levels: 1) mobility, 2) urban blocks, and 3) open space. The thesis proposes a set of criteria and imagines the results of these criteria. By combining the sustainable solution for the housing crisis and measures for the improvement of liveability, it is possible to uplift neighborhoods that deals with social and spatial problems and create a just and healthy urban environment for all.

Inequality in the city of Amsterdam is growing. While in the 70s, the city was described as a prime example of a Just City, the contemporary metropolis is growing as a city of the elite. Neoliberal planning in recent decades has focused on attracting knowledge workers to Amsterdam with a strategy of privatization, deregulation and decentralization. Not only has this led to a situation where access to the municipality for lower-income groups is compromised, but also to a complex development environment where democratic decision-making is vulnerable. The problems of inequality and undemocratic decision-making in the Amsterdam region call for a new understanding of how to redesign for a Just City, in which spatial justice and inclusive decision-making is protected. Therefore, this thesis research proposes a refined methodology that enables understanding contemporary demands for spatial justice and translating these demands into spatial design. A framework is developed that provides an overview of planning and design principles that must be protected during the development of a Just City. Furthermore, a 5-Step Methodology is being created that urban planners may use to translate these principles into spatial designs. With these instruments, the research contributes to academic knowledge about planning for justice and steering complex urban development. Although (spatial) justice is a value that may never be fully obtained and the fluid definition of a Just City is always evolving, the products of this research contribute to the political discourse on planning for justice and equity. The results may be further developed by integrating different academic disciplines and the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in its progress. Moreover, the performance of the methodology may be explored further by experimenting with it in a practical setting.

Solutions to contemporary urban challenges are increasingly the outcome of the complex interactions between formal and informal actors that take part in a variety of networks. Resilience-thinking has become a global popular perspective for the governance of urban systems, concerning the ability of communities to deal with urban challenges, that requires the development of the self-organizing capacity of informal actors such as residents. This study aims to determine how the extent to which formal and informal actors are resilient in interaction with one another can be determined. Therefore, a literature study was conducted that led to the development of the Institutional Resilience Analysis and Development (IRAD) framework, that is a modification of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that is complemented with variables influencing decision-making processes that are extracted from the literature on social resilience and adaptive governance. The IRAD framework is applied to an exploratory case study with the Resilient Bospolder Tussendijken 2028 programme in the neighbourhood Bospolder-Tussendijken in Rotterdam as the research context. Hereby, desk research and semi-structured interviews were held with formal and informal actors to study interactions resulting from a conflict concerning the management of societal real estate in the neighborhood. The application of the developed IRAD framework thereby identified both enablers and barriers for resilient interactions between formal and informal actors. Access to social networks has been identified as an enabler for resilient actions, whereas the lack of trust of residents in the municipality, lack of communication between formal and informal actors and a lack of a political base for new insights have been identified as barriers to resilient actions.

What happens if we look at (public) space through the lens of gender? How would it be experienced differently? These are questions this thesis will look into. It aims to not only explore different types of gendered spaces but also to increase the understanding of designers and planners on how to make public space more gender inclusive. With the purpose of exploration, a case study is done with a neighborhood in Rotterdam, namely Beverwaard. The conclusions are translated into a strategic framework and an accompanying patternbook. The strategic framework proposes the improvement of the safety, accessibility and inclusivity of public space.

Smells are everywhere around us. They are within ourselves and around us, they impact us in our mother’s womb and throughout our entire lives, until death. But while sight and touch prevail in the contemporary approach of design and architecture, the olfactive dimension of our built environment is often forgotten. This thesis aims at exploring the interactions between the space outside of the body and the body itself, studying how smells matter from the scale of the molecule to the urban planning. What are the potentials of this somewhat neglected sense and how could it be used by designers and architects? How do smells affect architecture and the humans inhabiting it? During the research, we focused on both a theoretical and an experimental approach, studying the alterations of materials, construction techniques, spaces but also bodies and minds. The research was conducted through different experimentations that helped the -exhaustive- understanding of the affects of smells on architecture. Interviews with different professionals in the landscaping, research or perfumery fields, such as perfumer Fredrik Dalman (from Maison Mona Di Orio), and the analysis of theories of affects with the texts of Deleuze and Guattari, Malgrave, Massumi, Grosz and others lead to the study of the affects of smells on humans.

This research focuses on the relationship between perceived safety and the physical environment and is conducted in the neighborhood Pendrecht, a modernist neighborhood in Rotterdam-Zuid. The research has identified the effects of the spatial environment on perceived safety and has selected design principles that according to theory would improve the perceived safety. The effects of the design principles on the perceived safety is validated through a stated choice experiment. The final outcome of this thesis is a neighborhood transformation design that integrates the validated design principles.

Due to the current pandemic caused by COVID-19, its impact has again become clear that resilience is essential within cities and communities. An important aspect of this community resilience is the relationship between local institutions and local communities. To discover how this dynamic between formal and informal actors, and networks changes during crises, a literature study was done to find out how community resilience can be facilitated. From this study a conceptual framework for the facilitation of resilience was created. An exploratory case study was done of the community BoTu Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, to research in which extent a resilient attitude is embodied by local institutions in cooperation with local communities and validate the framework. Through resilient governance and community leadership, social capital can be enabled and activated to allow problem-solving within a community, fostering greater resilience within communities. Moreover, formal and informal actors made role switches to fulfil a useful function in the community. These role changes were facilitated or frustrated by several factors, ranging from absence or presence of formal actors, social network access or lack thereof and digital resources.

The main goal of this graduation project is to create a feasibility study. The objective is to design, calculate and test different ways of how a unitized façade element can transform, rotate or convert for creating a temporary outdoor space. This façade element is connected with the same façade brackets used in the unitized façade system. The focus point in this study will be, façade fittings, profiles, construction (dimensions, movement, strength etc.), dimensions compared with the current unitized façade elements, practicality of the design and how much the design would cost to produce.

The advent of steamship in the 19th century is accompanying with the Chinese immigration. Chinese seamen gathered around the dockland at a certain scale and formed Chinese quarters. Therefore, Chinatowns appeared in many harbour cities in European countries. With the urban development and migrant shifts within the recent one hundred years, Chinatowns transformed many times regarding their recognitions, urban roles and functions. However, Chinatowns seem to decline universally. The stereotypic manifestation and commodification have gradually erased the social meaning as an ‘ethnic core’, and the ‘voluntaristic way’ to accommodate difference (Peach, 1996). Based on literatures, this thesis defined the spatial dimensions and social constriction of Chinatowns, as well as the concept of integration and authenticity, analysed contextualised problems of Chinatown in Amsterdam, and thereby to reconfigure Chinatown in Amsterdam through the socio-spatial strategies.

Trends of neoliberalisation and globalisation have led to the financialisation of housing on a global scale. This has led to the increasing deployment of state-led gentrification as a strategy for urban development, as cities aim to strengthen their position as nodes in the global economy. In the Netherlands, these trends have led to the marginalisation of social housing. As the city of Rotterdam develops ambitious plans to restructure its old city harbours into dense mixed-use districts, residents of the adjoining neighbourhood Tweebos protest the forced demolition of their social housing units in the midst of a national housing crisis. These dwellings have to make way in favour of new privately owned homes for middle-income residents as part of the municipality’s plans for city-wide socio-economic diversification. This thesis proposes an alternative development strategy for Tweebos based in the right to the city. By establishing a Community Land Trust in Tweebos, residents will be able to regain control over the development of their neighbourhood. The CLT holds the land in perpetuity, controlling rents and resale prices democratically through the neighbourhood and thus ensuring affordability. The CLT provides Tweebos residents an instrument to elevate the use value of urban space above its exchange value, a platform to participate in the production of urban space and a mechanism to fund those developments. This thesis argues that by doing so, the CLT protects the urban commons and institutionalises the right to the city. The principles of the CLT can thus help strengthen the right to the city in the Dutch system of housing development, and can provide a starting point for a stronger public housing sector in the Netherlands.

The development of a city is always accompanied by the debate of justice. London, a world city, changing towards a hyper-diversity scenario, is even criticized by different groups about their right to live in the city. The injustice show on both social and spatial dimension here and the inequality and injustice in London usually illustrated as limits applied on accessibility and living quality for disadvantaged locals. Hackney as one part of the most deprived area, which is socially and spatially segregated out of the active zone of London, as well as it is under the danger of losing its strong local identity due to the new trend of urban regeneration. A possible path for Hackney is to promote a new type of urban regeneration that focuses on and driven by the local diversities, which could be supported by the inclusive design on the public spaces. However, the current debates about the injustice with segregation caused by it are unlinked with the local context, while it is also missing a bridge to the current inclusive design practices. This thesis aims to define the design approach for cohesive living and inclusive development in Hackney local, which has the potentials to applied at similar towns and local places, cross London. Supporting this aim, on the one hand, a new scope with added values for understanding the diversity and justice in Hackney was established. It helped to assess the current publicness in Hackney as the active and inactive sides on- or back of- the high streets. On the other hand, the observations in this thesis bridged the gap between the debates and the local practices by delivering a series of behavior-space patterns. This thesis is finishing with a set design of spatial interventions with their new public cultures, showing the possible quality in local for developing the identical and inclusive public hotspots in Hackney Central.

The current Dutch housing domain is characterised by injustices on multiple scales, such as a shortage of housing, disparities in well-being across regions, and unaffordable housing. This situation can partially be attributed to spatial planning practices focused on promoting growth-oriented economic thinking. These contemporary planning practices can be argued to be socially and spatially selective and to have a short time horizon. While some injustices remain unresolved, others are exacerbated by contemporary planning practices. The aim of this research has been to develop a justice framework which helps spatial planners address, instead of perpetuate injustices. This is approached through the question: To what extent can a framework based on justice values help spatial planners design for justice in the housing domain in Dutch regions? This has led to the development of a justice framework constructed from three core justice values: Sufficiency, Limitation and Opportunity. These are made more concrete to the housing domain through two applied values each: (I) Availability and (II) Acceptability for the quantitative and qualitative aspects of Sufficiency; (III) Sustainability and (IV) Moderation dealing with intergenerational justice and intragenerational justice for Limitation; and (V) Influence and (VI) Diversity related to opportunities to assert influence on the living environment and to choose a living environment. These applied values are further specified using housing dimensions and strategy directions in two consecutive rings. The first advantage for spatial planners is that the justice framework summarises and combines several abstract justice theories into digestible values relevant to the Dutch context. To test and demonstrate the justice framework it has been applied to the case study area of the Regio Stedendriehoek, which enabled answering the research question. First the justice framework helps to structure regional spatial analysis and policy analysis on a wide range of justice values, which can bring to light different types of injustices. Second, based on the analyses, clusters can be made of areas with similar problems regarding the applied values, which helps determine which type of strategies require priority in different areas. Then, based on these priorities, strategies can be developed using the outer ring of the justice framework. The justice framework helps to structure strategy development per applied value, but the justice framework can also be used as a tool to assess whether strategies can contribute to solving injustices for different applied values. In this way fruitful strategies can be prioritised and interventions that cause conflicts between different justice values can be avoided or mitigated.