This paper examines the impact of recent policies on the transformation of local participatory urban planning in Saudi Arabia since the implementation of Vision 2030 in 2016, highlighting both its potential and challenges. It analyzes the shift from centralized to localized planning at the municipal level and its effects, including increased opportunities for public participation through workshops and digital platforms, as well as the persistence of challenges such as limited public influence on final decisions and inadequate transparency in planning processes. Using a comprehensive literature review, policy document analysis, semi-structured interviews with 20 Saudi urban planners, and a survey of 453 participants, this study reveals significant governance changes. These changes include increased municipal autonomy and the establishment of regional development authorities, which have provided opportunities for local participatory planning. However, the findings also highlight concerns regarding the exclusion of marginalized communities, displacement caused by mega projects, and limited transparency in decision-making processes. While initiatives such as ‘Your Voice Is Heard’, including ‘Balady’ and ‘Istitlaa’, have facilitated a modest degree of public participation, bureaucratic barriers, regulatory complexities, and centralized control continue to hinder the full realization of local participatory planning goals. This study concludes that although policies have improved inclusivity, sustainability, and efficiency, addressing broader ethical concerns and governance challenges is essential for the transformative potential of Vision 2030 to be fully realized in reshaping urban governance in Saudi Arabia.

The mega-regional unevenness, namely the development gap between cores and smaller cities, has increasingly become a key obstacle for inter-city coordination in China. Scholars tend to focus more on the leading role of the cores in responding to this problem. When the smaller cities are mentioned, their endogenous characteristics and weaknesses are often highlighted, rather than being valued as important nodes embedded in the regional network and the inter-city relations. This paper conceptualizes these smaller players in mega-regional system as “secondary cities” to emphasize their interconnectedness to the cores and embeddedness in the inter-city relations. Based on this, we firstly examine the (trans)formation trends of the core-secondary relations in Chinese mega-regionalization. In this way, we focus on the role of secondary cities by exploring the functional and political positioning in the dynamic regional system. Building on such conceptualization of secondary cities, we construct an indicator system to measure changes of core-secondary unevenness from 2006 to 2023. We find that although mega-regionalization aims to rebalance inter-city relations, secondary cities are still facing challenges of polarization and peripheralization. Finally, we conduct a clustering analysis based on the differences between core and secondary cities regarding economic structure, aiming to explore the differentiated vulnerabilities of various types of secondary cities when confronted with polarization and peripheralization. This paper expands the theoretical scope of secondary cities to provide an innovative analytical perspective for understanding the mega-regional unevenness problems in China. Meanwhile, we also emphasize the potential and value of core-secondary relations in addressing the challenges of secondary cities with the expectation of more targeted policy and planning actions.

This chapter discusses resilience in informal settlements amid the COVID-19 pandemic of 2019–2022, focussing on the case of Favela Paraisópolis, a large informal settlement in São Paulo, Brazil. It highlights the importance of community organisation in building resilience while arguing the importance of the State's action in structuring informal spaces as a condition for greater success of community resilience. It seeks to clarify factors leading to community resilience in Paraisópolis and whether these factors can contribute to an expanded understanding of the concept. It does so by revisiting resilience theory and conducting a critical analysis of the history of the pandemic inside the favela, informed by interviews with key stakeholders and health and demographic statistics. It subsequently highlights the limits of these actions organised by an economically and politically oppressed population that lacks the necessary capital to face a health crisis of this magnitude. It draws attention to the risks of a neoliberal appropriation of the concept of resilience as a narrative that delegates the solution of societal problems solely to individuals and communities, taking the State off the hook. Finally, it highlights the power of resilience as a dimension of oppressed communities’ struggles for effective public policies.

In an age marked by converging global crises—climate change, growing inequality, democratic erosion, and increasing socio-spatial inequality and fragmentation—the search for justice has become a definitive imperative for urban planning. One way to explore these issues is through an exercise of collective imagination we call The Manifesto for the Just City. [...]

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.

The TU Delft Strategic Planning Cycle is a comprehensive strategic planning model designed to enhance urban sustainability and inclusivity by incorporating a range of participatory tools and methodologies that facilitate broad stakeholder engagement through a detailed step-by-step planning cycle.

The TU Delft Strategic Planning Cycle is rooted in the Dutch tradition of democratic visioning and strategic planning, which emphasises the integration of policy and design alongside a strong participatory ethos. This tradition is central to the planning education offered at TU Delft, where students and professionals are trained to approach urban planning with a integrative perspective that combines technical expertise with a deep commitment to democratic processes and sustainable outcomes.

The ongoing debates surrounding sustainability transitions in cities and regions highlight the urgent need to make these transitions fairer, more democratic, and inclusive. Currently, there is increasing recognition that sustainability transitions must be more just to avoid the risk of failure and the deepening of discontent with climate action, particularly in disadvantaged urban areas and among marginalised communities. Similarly, in the field of urban planning, there is a rapidly expanding body of literature on spatial justice, emphasising the need for more equitable planning in terms of the spatial distribution of benefits and burdens, fairness in procedures, and recognition of the diverse needs and interests of different social groups. However, planning practice has yet to keep pace with this trend, and there is a significant knowledge gap regarding how to measure and evaluate spatial justice in the planning process. This paper seeks to address this gap by proposing a spatial justice assessment tool for planning documents. We outline the conceptual model that underpins the tool and demonstrate its application across four European cities.

The assessment is conducted in two phases. The first phase involves using the Values, Strategies, Objectives, and Actions (VSOA) approach to distil essential part of their agenda from the documents prepared by the cities. This approach provides a framework for analysing key components and understanding how values are articulated and translated into actionable measures. It helps to identify the overall vision, the strategies designed to achieve it, the specific objectives set, and the tangible actions proposed. In the second phase, we employ spatial justice as a lens for a qualitative evaluation of how cities address the dimensions of distributive, procedural, and recognition justice within city-wide planning documents. This includes ensuring the fair distribution of burdens and benefits, focusing on processes that do not exacerbate inequalities, and being attentive to needs and aspirations of marginalised and vulnerable groups and identities affected by these transitions.

The paper applies the evaluation tool in four diverse urban contexts: Belfast, Rotterdam, Granollers, and Budapest. These cities vary in size, are located in different parts of Europe, and represent different planning cultures. The plans assessed also cover a range of climate action documents, from overarching sustainability transition plans to more specific energy transition or climate resilience plans. We present and critically evaluate the scores produced by the evaluation of the four planning documents, discussing these findings in relation to the existing literature and considering their implications for planning and policy practice in the context of delivering more just urban sustainability transitions. By deploying the tool in these varied settings, we demonstrate its versatility and broad applicability as a spatial justice assessment framework for urban planning practice. Additionally, we illustrate its potential as a critical discourse analytical tool, revealing the extent to which sustainability transition discourses in urban planning adhere to the principles of spatial justice.

Mega-regional planning in China is expected to tackle intra-regional unevenness, namely the development gap between regional core cities and the surrounding secondary cities. However, mega-regionalization processes seem to further increase the centrality of cores and push secondary cities towards greater polarization and peripheralization, as they lose socioeconomic vitality, industrial capacity, and political voice. To reflect on why mega-regions are not fulfilling their role of rebalancing regional urban systems, we conceptualize mega-regionalization as a mechanism to coordinate spatial relations within a territory and build a novel framework to analyze the relations between core and secondary cities. First, we show that visions of mega-regional planning regarding core-secondary relations pursue goals of morphological polycentricity, flow multi-directionality, and functional complementarity. Then, we use thematic analysis to evaluate the policy orientations of mega-regional planning to achieve these goals and extract three policy themes governing core-secondary spatial relations - coexistence, connectivity, and cooperation. These can systematically redefine mega-regional planning mechanisms by giving a central role to the spatial relations between core and secondary cities. Emphasizing spatial relations to conceptualize mega-regional governance allows a novel reflection on the challenges of unevenness grounded in the perspective of secondary cities. This deepens our understanding of governance mismatches that keep ideal visions and policy orientations misaligned when seen from secondary cities. Place, priority, and actor mismatches limit the potential of mega-regionalization to respond to their challenges. This research provides a relational understanding of mega-regions, calling for more attention to secondary cities, and the development of more balanced and sustainable mega-regions.

The governmental initiative of high-quality development (HQD) marks a shift in the Chinese development paradigm from prioritizing speed to prioritizing quality towards comprehensive goals of economic growth, social vitality, innovation capacity, industrial upgrading, regional cooperation, and green transformation. This initiative is increasingly discussed within the framework of mega-regions, with prior studies demonstrating that they are critical arenas for promoting HQD visions. However, unevenness within mega-regions has become an important limitation to this vision. Namely, significant disparities exist between mega-regional core cities and the smaller neighboring cities in most HQD indicators. This paper conceptualizes these smaller players as secondary cities. Based on this, this paper aims to understand and differentiate the specific challenges of secondary cities facing intra-regional unevenness in the context of HQD. We build an evaluation framework and employ the TOPSIS method to evaluate 34 core cities and 180 secondary cities. Then, we introduce typological thinking to develop a meaningful classification of secondary cities based on the results of these evaluations. K-means clustering analysis identifies five secondary city types with similar profiles. The analysis supports the discussion of the characteristics and challenges of each type and may contribute to policy recommendations for a balanced HQD in mega-regional secondary cities.

This article identifies the key factors either supporting or blocking the implementation of the Right to the City concept in the urban planning systems of Brazil and Poland. Poland and Brazil, despite some differences, can be compared from the perspective of selected features of spatial planning systems. A characterisation of the spatial planning systems of both countries, including their legal and socio-political conditions, is made. The article identifies these institutional challenges and barriers in both national spatial planning systems, which can be linked to a discussion of the Right to the City concept. It then analyses how elements of the Right to the City concept are implemented in each system and what constitutes the main barrier. Those elements of the Right to the City concept that can be more universally compared were identified. The commonalities and discrepancies found in the two systems are then discussed. In Brazil, the Right to the City concept is much more strongly framed in formal and legal terms, but market and social inequalities are a barrier to its implementation. In Poland, on the other hand, there is a broader institutional inertia in the implementation of the concept. In both countries, there are serious (different) barriers related to the implementation of the Right to the City concept in the urban planning system.

This white paper aims to provide an introduction to the topic of Design for Justice for a wide audience. It demonstrates ongoing research on this topic by the TU Delft community and contributes to the exchange of relevant knowledge and expertise, as one of the outcomes of the activities organised for the Delft Design for Values Institute’s annual theme ‘Design for Justice’. This document includes recommendations on how to foster Design for Justice, which are not just relevant for designers, engineers, and academic researchers, but also for educators and policy makers.

Rechtvaardigheid wordt over de hele wereld gezien als fundament voor menselijke waardigheid en billijkheid. De filosoof John Rawls begint zijn klassieker A theory of justice met de woorden "Rechtvaardigheid is de voornaamste deugd van sociale instituties, zoals de waarheid dat is voor denksystemen. Maar een theorie, hoe elegant en praktisch ook, moet verworpen of herzien worden als deze onwaar blijkt. Net zoals wetten en instituties, hoe efficiënt en doordacht ze ook zijn, hervormd of afgeschaft moeten worden als deze onrechtvaardig blijken". [...]

Although for millennia the Mediterranean has facilitated the exchange of goods and people, in recent decades, it has been treated as a border between continents, nations and supranational institutions, with the European Union on one side and MENA region on the other. Yet pressing issues related to migration, climate change and pollution reveal problems with the border approach. In 1995, the Barcelona Process culminated in the creation of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) and the UfM Urban Agenda in an attempt to better connect countries around the Mediterranean. To concretise this agenda, TU Delft and the authors of this text were invited to work with DG-Regio, UNESCO, the EIB (European Investment Bank), and the ministries in charge of spatial planning in Member States, to draft the UfM Strategic Action Plan for Sustainable Urban Development. The goal of the Action Plan is to enhance the strategic and integrative value of spatial planning interventions in each country. Based on the personal reflections of the authors and the detailed communication with the institutions involved in the making of the plan, the article presents the history and the conceptual framework of the making of the UfM Strategic Action Plan. It concludes by highlighting the hurdles that the UfM Strategic Action Plan faces as a new transnational policy framework for the transfer of policy from the European Union to the MENA region (Middle East and the North of Africa). Such challenges are not only based on content, but they are also related to the frames and structures within which policy is developed and exchanged.

In her book “Doppelgänger: A Trip into the Mirror World,” Naomi Klein (2023) writes about the forces that have destabilised her personal world and which are “part of a much larger web of forces that are destabilising our shared world”. Klein talks about the disagreements she sees in a “mirror world” of distortions. These disagreements are not about a shared reality but about the very nature of reality. What is real? In recent years, our world has been savaged by fake news and “alternative facts,” science denialism, and a profound and seemingly irreversible scepticism towards politics that have destabilised us all. But where does this “war on reality” come from? What has led us to seek our own private unique realities, giving up on broad collective endeavours and visions and, ultimately, giving up on politics? Why has public discourse become so dark? [...]

This article explores the use of the pattern language approach in bridging the gap between formal and informal urban planning practices in the African context. This study focuses on a case application within the urbanised region encompassing the Nakivubo wetland located in Kampala, Uganda. As in other cities in Africa with a colonial past, Kampala’s planning system signals a profound gap between a technocratic, European paradigms-based type of planning and the everyday practices of citizens. This results in a “dual city,” with formal and informal communities using resources and spaces differently, leading to spatial segregation and non-implementation of urban plans. To overcome this challenge, the pattern language approach is utilised in this research to link formal and informal practices through facilitating meaningful community participation and integrating tacit knowledge into the planning process. To achieve this, the researchers conducted fieldwork and interacted with the local community in informal settlements to develop informal patterns, while analysing the history and current organisation of formal planning institutions in Kampala to formulate formal patterns. The patterns were used as input for a community workshop, which resulted in a pattern language of wetland management practices and a framework that begins to bridge both formal and informal domains of urban practice. By using the pattern language approach as a tool to understand informal practices and their possible incorporation into a planning process that captures the needs of citizens, this research offers relevant insights into achieving sustainable and inclusive urban environments.

Based on the understanding of the built environment as result of competing claims on space that must be resolved via recognition, fair distribution of burdens and benefits of our human association, respect and care for the planet and just procedures to decide on those claims, Spatial Planning and Strategy is a chair in the Department of Urbanism within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology, committed to helping create sustainability, resilience and spatial justice through the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, the Paris Climate Agreement and the European New Deal, among other frameworks. This commitment is reflected in activities, events, and courses. We are concerned with knowledge about the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of strategic and urban planning tools – visions, strategies, plans and programmes.

At first sight, the title of this book seems to make an impossible promise: to bridge the divide between knowledge and practice in creating built environments seems like an altogether unreachable promise, lacking in academic restraint, in view of the complexity and vastness of the task. But Lawrence’s book is a major intellectual and organizational undertaking that delivers. The bridge of the title is carefully laid out for the reader, who quickly understands that the author is in fact claiming for a more democratic, inclusive, and collaborative planning and design practice that embraces diverse ways of knowing and breaks free from disciplinary boundaries to understand the built environment and its social and natural relationships in all their complexity.

The complexity and interconnectedness of the urban challenges of today demand integrated and innovative approaches to the planning and design of sustainable, fair, and inclusive cities and regions. This, in turn, requires us to challenge and rethink current planning practice and education. Future generations of planners and designers need knowledge and skills to deal with that complexity by integrating insights from across different disciplines, from urban and regional design, environmental technology, geomatics, and urban studies to history and other branches of the social sciences. Furthermore, they also need to have a strong understanding of the values, ethical challenges, and dilemmas intrinsic to planning practice. These insights, methods, and frameworks provide a foundation for envisioning a future in which justice and sustainability play central roles. Contemporary planners need effective tools for developing shared spatial visions in communicative democratic exercises, to design strategies to achieve those visions, and create action plans for their implementation. Communication plays a central role in multi-stakeholder environments, especially when power and knowledge are unevenly distributed, as is the case in cities. It is generally understood that the fields of planning and design require a value-oriented stance that seeks to promote pluralism(both epistemological and political) and shape public debate and practice. Planning is seen as a process in which visioning and strategy creation for (and with) diverse stakeholders is carried out. Therefore, blueprint planning is skewed in favour of participatory and deliberative planning. Conveying ideas and shaping the future are two of the capabilities of planning and design. With the help of design, we can better ground planning in existing spatial conditions and maximise the potentials of a given space. Design adds imagination and creativity to planning practice and opens up opportunities for experimenting with stakeholder participation and (visually) communicating solutions to complex urban challenges. This book provides an authoritative collection of perspectives on theories, urban challenges, and methods of research and education in planning, from a diversity of perspectives and disciplines. It builds upon the integrative ‘Delft approach’ to Urbanism, which draws on knowledge and research from design, the social and physical sciences, and engineering. At the Department of Urbanism of TU Delft, students and staff engage in cross-disciplinary and comparative studies to better understand the inherent connections between spatial planning, spatial design, landscape design, environmental technology, urban data science and urban studies. It is our hope that the various chapters in this book will resonate with the call for a more pluralist and adaptive approach to planning and design, one that is in constant evolution in response to changing needs, circumstances, and perspectives.

Values are at the core of design for the built environment. Values influence not only the final outcome of a design process, but also the process of design (who gets involved, how this engagement is managed, and whose voices are heard in the design process). Values also influence how spatial designs are used, preserved and managed. This chapter explores the growing awareness of the city and (heritage) values commons and identifies ways of dealing with these abstract concepts. It concludes that values only exist when they are commonly held and that built heritage values emerge through communication between people exchanging ideas about the existing environment the humans have created. Where in the past this communication was between experts, we are now broadening the discussion to include every stakeholder. Values are our intangible commons, and their curation should be a common endeavour.