As the urban population grows worldwide and cities are becoming increasingly unequal and segregated, Urban Commons emerge as a potential driver of inclusion and resilience for city dwellers. According to Feinberg et al. (2021), Urban Commons can promote social, environmental, and economic resilience, and Park et al. (2020) suggest they can act as a haven for the excluded. Commons could, therefore, become a policy alternative to address the grand urban challenges of the 21st Century.
However, it is still unclear whether the benefits of Urban Commons are ultimately accessible to the culturally and socioeconomically vulnerable. For instance, in a literature review study, Huron (2017) found significant uncertainties in how Urban Commons relate to feminism, race, gender, and ethnicity – factors that could constitute immaterial barriers of access, following Vrasti & Dayal’s (2017) terminology. In fact, while several studies have investigated the commons’ role in promoting urban justice, explorations of whether access to the commons itself is just have been neglected.

This master’s thesis explores what constitutes material and immaterial barriers to accessing Urban Commons to understand whether these initiatives can work, policy-wise, as a driver of social inclusion. 29 Urban Commons in Amsterdam were selected as a case study. A quantitative geo-spatial analysis was conducted to evaluate the material accessibility to each initiative. In parallel, commoners were surveyed about their perception of immaterial barriers and benefits of commoning. Finally, a representative of the municipality of Amsterdam was interviewed to assess the potential challenges and benefits of policies involving Urban Commons.

Concurring with Park et al. (2020), the case study findings suggest commons could indeed promote social inclusion. Moreover, it was also found that the excluded could face, in addition to the initially proposed material and immaterial walls, an ecosystem barrier to access commons. Yet this could be addressed from a policy standpoint with the development of a commons ecosystem that is capable of scaling the benefits of commoning across an entire city.

The results have academic and societal relevance. This study provides a new theoretical framework to research the factors influencing access to commons and also contributes to literature with a unique city-wide case study. It can also function as a reference for policy-makers who wish to learn about the commons landscape in Amsterdam and who interested in understanding the factors that contribute to participation in a commons.

This book addresses the need to re-imagine and re-conceptualise the Just City in light of recent systemic shocks: climate change, the pandemic, a generalised erosion of democratic standards and more. It contains texts by a number of guests and 43 manifestos written by students from 25 universities from all over the world. A "Manifesto for the Just City" comes in the wake of the realisation that socio-spatial justice is a crucial dimension for sustainability transitions. Growing inequality and the erosion of the public sphere undermine the social and political structures required to fight climate change, pandemics and other systemic shocks. With this book, we have sought to encourage students to formulate their own visions for the Just City and for a just transition. This book is result of an Urban Thinkers Campus organised between 9 and 30 November 2020. The Urban Thinkers Campus (UTC) model is an initiative of UN-Habitat's World Urban Campaign, conceived in 2014 as an open space for critical exchange between stakeholders and partners. It aims to promote debate and action on sustainable and inclusive urbanization upholding the principles and guidelines contained in the New Urban Agenda, launched at Habitat-III in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador.

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The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Integrated affordable housing, for instance, has come to the top of the agenda once again, now propelled by the realisation that slum dwellers (a staggering 1 billion people around the world) and homeless people are particularly vulnerable to health crises and other societal shocks. The pandemic has been saluted as an opportunity to implement far-reaching transformation of our societies towards sustainability and justice, but little signs of systemic change have actually surfaced. For example, several cities around the world claim they will overhaul public space, take space from private cars, and invest more on green spaces, bicycle paths and quality public mobility. But little has been said about addressing the structural causes of inequality. The champions of the circular economy salute the pandemic as a new dawn for more human-centred capitalism, for the abandonment of exploitation and unfair distribution, and a world where workers can find decent housing, health, work and leisure. But what is actually happening on the ground? This UTC explores some of these issues by giving a platform to people with knowledge from the ground. It also discusses the many advances being made towards an inclusive green transition, through the European Green Deal and a growing activist movement in the UK. This event was organised by GUL, the Global Urban Lab of the TU Delft University of Technology, a communication and action platform that brings visibility and articulation to TU Delft staff and students doing work on topics of urbanisation in the Global South. @en

This graduation project is focused on a re-interpretation of the design of a high-rise building from an urban design perspective, to contribute to a more inclusive city. This is captured by the main research question: In which manner could the design of a high-rise building in the context of the Binckhorst The Hague, from the perspective of urban design, contribute to the development of a more inclusive city? The urgency of the subject follows on the trend of high-rise developments in Europe, The Netherlands and The Hague. The Hague is predicted to grow substantially in population until 2040. The municipality has chosen a strategy of high-rise developments, to house the increasing population and to improve spatial quality. The Binckhorst plays an important role in this strategy. In the design of high-rise buildings there is a set of social challenges that should be accounted for: a rigid structure, homogeneity; and vertical segregation. The lack of a humanistic approach and the high amount of residents per building create the urge to approach the design of high-rise buildings from an urban design perspective. The Hague is dealing with a set of social challenges like segregation, loneliness, and social exclusion. This should be understood in the light of a hyper-diverse population with the nature of constantly changing needs and values of the residents. The main design value is inclusivity, as a part of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, it answers to the most fundamental ethical consideration for the development of our cities. Related to the theories of Just Diversity and the Open-City, the sub-design values that contribute to a more inclusive city and answer to the social context of The Hague are formulated. The design values taken from these theories are recognition, encounter and adaptability. Recognition addresses the different needs and values of people, adaptability responds to the changing needs and values and encounter is aimed at facilitating interaction between like and unlike individuals. Continuing on the design values a set of urban design principles and related elements guide the projects towards a more concrete form. These principles are tested by observations in and around existing high-rise buildings in The Hague and interviews with residents. The project concludes in a high-rise design in the Binckhorst The Hague. The design consists of urban design elements like a vertical living street, public spaces (pockets) along the route and a configuration of volumes and program. This project has set a clear framework of design values and principles that contribute to an inclusive high-rise design. While the fieldwork and the design constituted to an evaluation of these principles, more experiments in design or a wider target-group for interviews could help better ground the principles. Here extensive research in the context of one or a few of the innovative projects mentioned could help to better understand the social implications of design decisions taken. Next to the academic work there remains a need for visionary and experimental high-rise projects to explore new design approaches.

Chennai, a city in the eastern coast of Tamil Nadu, India, has grown from a colonial outpost to a metropolitan city today through a process of rapid urbanisation causing a loss of open spaces in the city and a general lack of public spaces. Chennai, geographically divided by the Cooum river into the North and South, also has characteristic differences in their living environments and their constituent demographics.

Although design of public spaces and associated theoretical concepts like placemaking, liveability and vitality are widely explored in the western context, these are not directly applicable to the Indian context. This calls for a more contextualised approach towards the design of public spaces that respond more organically to the local way of life. This project proposes to understand the local meaning of public spaces and their characteristic role in changing the identity of the forgotten parts of the city.

This project looks at two exemplary cases and the design of public places and the fabric around to respond better to the local context and eventually changing their identity. This project also proposes strategic interventions, their implementation over a timeline. Finally, it looks at the larger design impact and the level of transferability of the proposed design interventions and their role in transforming these forgotten parts of the city.