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.@en

Socio-ecological inclusion and the impacts of climate change on the built environment are two shared concerns central to the design and planning of the just transition in cities. The just transition leans heavily on inclusive convergence processes that are grounded in knowledge integration and transdisciplinary practice. However, there is a paucity of effective methods for the inclusion of so-called weak signals from actors situated at the periphery of these convergence processes. Building on the concept of structured flexibility, we introduce a building-blocks approach as a modular architecture for constructing methods for distributed engagement and knowledge integration beyond conventional small-group settings. By engaging in research through design, the Amplifying Weak Signals approach was prototyped with students in the context of dealing with heatwaves in The Hague and tested with expert users from the region who facilitate resilience strategy-making processes. Out of 900 possible building block combinations, 18 methods were created during prototyping. The resulting heatwave strategies that were drafted based on the collected peripheral knowledge showed the integration of new socio-ecological issues rather than a drastic departure from the baseline resilience strategy of the city. We discuss the research findings and their use in the production of guidelines for the construction of methods to integrate peripheral knowledge in convergence processes. Ongoing work to develop the guidelines in the form of an open-access, interactive repository of knowledge elicitation methods for urban resilience spatial planning will also be described. Recommendations for scaling the approach are provided.@en

Port cities exist at the intersection between water and land. They are currently under pressure due to global changes and climate, economic and social transitions. As they face the urgent need to respond to contemporary urgencies, port and city authorities tend to ignore port cities’ long history of integration and resilience. Instead, they continue the process that emerged since industrialization and that was reinforced by containerization, a process of disconnected development, divergent tools and visions. Such an approach, however, is no longer viable when port, city and territory face shared water challenges. To address this challenge, the course “Designing Public Spaces for Maritime Mindsets” challenged students to explore the future of port-city relations by rethinking public spaces as hubs where port and city actors can come together to share conversations and visions, engage in dialogues with citizens to develop a common agenda and maritime mindsets. Such gatherings are much needed to stimulate new approaches for future port territories that are no longer characterized by obsolete energy use or polluting industries. This article argues that design education can play an important role in generating new theoretical and practical planning approaches by combining historical analysis and spatial mapping and by developing provocative scenarios.@en

This article analyses the urban conditions of Chennai, India, and takes a critical look at its planning framework by considering four main aspects: the ecological structures, urban morphology, mobility, and livability. To do so, the article examines policy documents, urban form, public perceptions, and daily mobility patterns. Specific attention is focused on three layers of the urban fabric: water and ecology, transport infrastructure, and housing. First, the city’s river restoration is critically assessed, with a focus on integrating the social dimension into the process. Second, the metro network is analyzed, specifically understanding its usage with respect to different user groups. Third, the densification pattern in different parts of the city is analyzed. Considering the layers of water, transport infrastructure, and housing together, the article sets out an alternative integrated approach to strategic design and planning in the city towards the goal of creating a more livable public realm. The proposed integrated framework, termed “supergrids” is a city-scale strategy that enables a large reconfiguration of the existing networks in the city, integration of ecological systems into the public space network, and a restructuring of movement patterns by upscaling the vehicular network, and aligning pedestrian connections with green networks, public transit, and important functions. @en

Urban resilience is a prominent topic in landscape architecture and urban design that comprises systemic design approaches. While contemporary design discourses acknowledge this concept, the operationalization of urban resilience remains challenging. The different components of urban resilience need to be blended in robust and feasible spatial forms. This calls for holistic design frameworks targeted at operationalizing urban resilience. In response to this challenge, this chapter proposes the Applied Urban Resilience Framework. This is a conceptual framework for addressing the complexity of the urban environment subjected to shocks and stresses, through systemic approaches led by spatial design.@en

The rapid urbanization of metropolitan environments worldwide has led to increasing spatial fragmentation. Disconnected spaces have revealed spatial and social voids that reduce the adaptive capacity of a region. However, these spaces also offer latent potential for urban resilience. Accordingly, this study reveals how urban acupuncture promotes resilience in leftover spaces to reduce or embrace spatial fragmentation. This paper reviews spatial fragmentation and urban resilience from descriptive-analytical and normative perspectives. It proposes urban acupuncture to locate critical spatial structures and processes on a small scale. The study develops a conceptual framework around fragmentation and urban acupuncture. It investigates the assumptions behind the concepts of spatial fragmentation and proposes a dialectical framing of vacancy based on resilience and urban acupuncture, along with a reassessment of leftover space as a planning tool. The framework’s application is demonstrated in Tehran and Bucharest. As a result, spatial fragmentation significantly influences urban resilience to prevent expansion. Urban acupuncture opens the possibility of developing optimistic scenarios by considering leftover spaces and the broader opportunities they generate for urban resilience. Depending on the urban context, this strategy can be applied through a single intervention in a specific place or a network of coordinated interventions in different locations.@en

This paper presents the concept of urban pandemic vulnerability as a crucial framework for understanding how COVID-19 affects cities and how they react to pandemics. We adapted existing social and environmental urban vulnerability frameworks to assess pandemic impacts and responses, identifying the appropriate components and spatial, environmental and socio-demographic variables of interest. Pandemic vulnerability depends on exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity features, which occur in different combinations in different parts of a city. The model was applied to the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam (MRA) to create a map of pandemic vulnerability. This map differentiates between affected areas according to the types of vulnerability they experience, and it accurately identified the most vulnerable areas in line with real-world data. The findings contribute to clarifying the challenges brought by COVID-19, identifying vulnerability thresholds and guiding planning towards pandemic resilience@en

The complex institutional, economic, and societal trends that have characterized the post-socialist transition in Central and Eastern European countries have drastically reshaped urban development. The case of Budapest shows that three decades of nearly exclusive market-driven urban policies have resulted in a variety of social, spatial and environmental deficiencies. This paper presents the paradigm of creativity-driven urban regeneration and proposes an approach to implement this paradigm, with a key role for urban design interventions, to successfully address these challenges, specifically, the regeneration of industrial brownfields, in an integrated manner and to create more inclusive, just, and sustainable cities.

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Concerning resilient urban landscapes, current research emphasizes that we can no longer ignore ecological systems and social aspects. Thus, planning and design approaches must fundamentally address public needs and preferences. This research focuses on resilience from a community, infrastructure, social-ecological perspective, while there are still considerable gaps in integrated and holistic views on resilience. Moreover, providing more public spaces is a challenge, especially in cities with a high population density. Considering vacancy as an underexplored resource for socio-ecological benefits, this study intends to demonstrate how intervention in urban leftover spaces can transform into socio-ecological landscapes contributing to urban resilience. Moreover, choosing the design intervention will directly influence the vacancy; therefore, user preferences should be considered. With an analysis of critical aspects through experts’ opinions of landscape resilience in leftover spaces, the paper shows that Flexibility was the most effective, while Activity affected most properties. Also, to focus on human preferences, a questionnaire was distributed among 386 residents. The findings suggest that the diversity and density of trees, type of activity, and water may create resilient urban landscapes and provoke satisfaction. The study results might inform particular research projects and interventions that consider landscape as a resource for resilience. @en

Designing Systems for Informed Resilience Engineering’ (DeSIRE) is an extensive interdisciplinary research programme that shapes the 4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering (4TU RE Centre) and builds its capacity. Our understanding of resilience goes beyond robustness of infrastructure; we focus on resilience as the ability of coupled social-technical-environmental (STE) systems to absorb, react, recover, adapt and reorganize with change. Our mission is to advance and consolidate the understanding of resilience thinking, measuring resilience, and resilience coordination and governance. This mission statement conveys the 4TU RE community approach to resilience and the premises upon which this approach makes a difference.@en

Amongst other vectors of change, the development of cities as complex socio-technical-environmental systems is influenced by two notable driving forces: the accelerated development of smart city technologies enabled by the abundance pervasiveness of Big Data and the challenge of resilience to an increasing number of shocks and stresses driven by climate change and urbanisation. Recognising potential synergies between these two driving forces, the paper explores ways in which Big Data can contribute to the translation of systemic resilience targets into principles of spatial transformation and, as a result, to a better evidence base for urban design and planning decisions. To that end, the paper discusses the relationship between Big Data, urban design and planning, and urban resilience. It highlights how resilience-building is enabled by Big Data through, such as evidence-based design, spatial data visualisation and cross-scalar design. The paper also provides an overview of challenges that are brough by Big Data to urban resilience-building. The discussion ends with how Big-Data-driven urban resilience can be an approach that is complementary rather than alternative to traditional practices.@en

The issue of urban resilience concerns a multitude of urban systems and spaces. This thesis focuses on Urban River Corridors (URCs)—that is, urban spaces where the overlap between the urban systems (carrying the ’social-‘) and the river system (carrying the ‘-ecological’) is at the highest intensity—as strategic spaces with a potentially high contribution to urban resilience. The general hypothesis is that with an integrated spatial understanding, planning and design of rivers and the urban fabric surrounding them, cities could become more resilient not just to flood-related disturbances, but to general chronic stresses as well. Hence, the thesis addresses four spatial problems arising from the loss of synergy between the natural dynamics of rivers and the spatial configuration and composition of urban areas that they cross: (1) river-taming operations combined with riverside traffic corridors have weakened the relationship between fluvial geomorphology and urban morphology, transforming rivers into physical barriers; (2) flood-protection measures aiming for resistance to water dynamics have led to a latent flood risk; (3) the capacity of urban rivers to deliver ecosystem services has been diminished; and (4) rationalisations of the river system have reduced the scalar, (and implicitly) social and ecological complexity of urban rivers.

Drawing on theories of social-ecological resilience and urban form resilience, on conceptual and analytical tools from spatial morphology and landscape ecology, and on practical experience in urban river design projects, the thesis constructs a theory of social-ecologically integrated Urban River Corridors, in which it proposes a spatial-morphological definition, an assessment framework, and a set of design principles and design instruments. Framed as a transdisciplinary design study, the thesis integrates knowledge from various disciplines dealing with the problematique of urban rivers and employs a design-driven methodology that includes design explorations and design testing in the research process.

The case of Bucharest crossed by URC Dâmbovița and URC Colentina is used to contextualise the spatial-morphological definition, and to demonstrate, develop and test the proposed assessment framework, design principles, and design instruments with a distinct set of methods in each of the three parts of the thesis. In addition to a transdisciplinary literature review of URCs, and a historical review of Bucharest’s URCs, Part 1 presents a qualitative data analysis of 22 expert interviews, used to determine the current state of URC Dâmbovița and URC Colentina. Based on four key properties of URCs identified in literature, Part 2 develops an indicator system and a method for the assessment of social-ecological integration. Informed by key problems and potentials identified by the local experts, the assessment framework is then applied on the two URCs of Bucharest. In the last part, design applications, including urban river projects carried out by the author on other rivers and a design workshop in Bucharest, are used to demonstrate and test the design principles through design instruments.
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This paper describes an assessment of the effects of spatial heterogeneity on the future performance and resilience of an urban area. For this, indicators of environmental performance and resilience of critical infrastructures (energy and transportation systems) are explored. The approach combines established methodologies of building performance simulation, energy systems analysis, and environmental impact assessment of buildings and transportation systems. The study is centered on future urban design scenarios for an industrial neighborhood in Switzerland. For this case study, multi-functionality is proportional to the performance and resilience of critical infrastructures. Mono-functionality improves the resilience and performance of energy systems with a negative effect on that of transportation systems. Building intensity, and resource intensive users were found to play a higher role into the future performance and resilience of the area. The findings of this research could complement planning approaches of sustainable and resilient urban areas.@en

Cities can be seen as systems of organized complexity formed by interrelated and highly dynamic sub-systems. This paper reflects on the interactions and tensions between socio-ecological and/or socio-technical sub-systems in cities and their capacity to either improve or block urban processes. In this context, spatial heterogeneity could enhance or hinder the performance and resilience of critical urban sub-systems such as transport and energy. The consequence of this interaction might be detrimental to environmental quality (air and acoustic) and the livability of urban areas. This rationale may improve political and expert decision-making processes toward sustainable, resilient and livable cities.@en

Landscape architecture, landscape urbanism, and urbanism provide a number of tools, methods, and techniques for the design of the built and unbuilt urban landscape. The interplay of these techniques is left up to the designers, and the resulting range of projects associated with the terms is broad and inconsistent. This paper proposes Urban Scaffolding as a way to reconfigure existing practices into a flexible, scalable, repeatable, and compact design mechanism that simultaneously discovers and intervenes in a territory. The method was developed through design projects that focused on reconnecting the urban and natural landscape by means of topological strategies. Two of these projects will be used as examples in this paper.@en