Amsterdam is increasingly confronted with the challenges of overtourism, where the influx of visitors exceeds the city’s capacity to accommodate them without negatively impacting liveability. This thesis addresses the urgent need for a spatial and systemic response to overtourism by exploring how spatiotemporal and morphological urban data can inform new tourism strategies. Central to the research is the development of a novel method to measure tourist pressure using publicly accessible data from Google Maps—specifically, review counts and Popular Times data. These digital traces were processed to generate a continuous, time-based pressure metric, allowing for the spatial and temporal mapping of tourism flows across the city.
The analysis identified not only when and where tourism pressure is concentrated, but also how the urban environment mediates its effects. Spatial hotspots such as the city centre, Museumplein, and Vondelpark showed consistently high pressure, particularly in the evenings and weekends. Morphological and network analyses further revealed that certain neighbourhoods, despite being well-connected or underutilised, remain largely excluded from the tourism system. Indicators such as Angular Choice (space syntax), Floor Space Index (FSI), Ground Space Index (GSI), and Mixed-use Index (MXI) were used to assess urban capacity, and a moderation analysis showed how built form characteristics influence the relationship between tourist pressure and perceived nuisance.
Building on these insights, the thesis introduces the “DeTour” strategy—a spatial corridor linking three underutilised but well-connected urban cores: Sloterdijk, Zuidas, and Bijlmer ArenA. These areas were selected based on their existing hotel infrastructure, high network capacity, and potential for spatial development without displacing residential life. The strategy reinterprets Amsterdam’s multi-core vision, offering a phased and grounded alternative that redistributes flows through a network of interconnected nodes and transitions. Spatial designs for key areas demonstrate how these interventions can enhance tourist experience while strengthening local liveability.
Ultimately, the thesis shows how integrating data science with urban design can yield actionable strategies for cities grappling with overtourism. The methodology developed is not only transparent and reproducible but also adaptable to other urban contexts, contributing both to academic discourse and to practical planning efforts aimed at creating more balanced and resilient urban environments. ... Read more

With urgent urban challenges such as climate adaptation, energy transition, the continued extraction of resources and pushing urbanisation, the urgency of integrating planning and design with urban engineering increases. The implementation of new technological interventions and the utilisation of the natural system is hampered by the lack of an integrated approach incorporating urban planning and design decisions. Meanwhile, urban and economic growth increasingly competes for infrastructure and environment, affecting the success or failure of the daily operating systems of cities and regions and thereby urban competitiveness. The challenge is to fundamentally rethink the urban landscape in light of transitions, new concepts and new technologies – as material and ecological practices. The question is how to renew existing urbanised areas by integrating parameters of the natural system and technological innovations directly into urban development opportunities arising from spatial planning and design. In order to stimulate and design the synergy between design and engineering the course Infrastructure and Environment Design offers the possibility for urban design and landscape architecture students to get well acquainted with the concepts and language of the technical field on the subject of infrastructure and environment.... ... Read more

This project aims to address the challenges posed by the transition to renewable energy sources. This will cause an unstable and unreliable energy flow, which does not correspond with the current energy use patterns of society. Different elements of the current energy network are analysed. They have a big role in the transition towards a completely renewable energy system. The proposed solution involves the utilisation of hydrogen as a means to store and transport renewable energy. In order to achieve this, consumption and production patterns in North-western Europe are analysed in relation to existing energy infrastructure that is suitable for carrying hydrogen. With a combination of different data sources and a created algorithm a model is created that is able to generate clusters. These clusters resulted in a continental framework containing 3 typologies of energy landscapes. A centralized, decentralized and a resilient zone; inbetween. These landscapes are characterised by their population, proximity and current land use against societal challenges such as justice, resilience, polarisation, and reliability. Self-made algorithms are used to transcribe the landscapes into a collection of physical energy elements that will be needed in areas. These measurements are visualized to propose what the future “energyscapes” could look like. The project suggests implementations on different scales for the new paradigm in the energy transition where hydrogen contributes to a just and reliable energy system. ... Read more