This study explores how residents use and experience their living environment, focusing on the social affordances of neighbourhood places. Through narrative mapping in group sessions in a case study neighbourhood in Rotterdam, nineteen residents, including less-heard groups, mapped their living environments and reflected on their experiences. While residents primarily engage within their neighbourhood, perceptions of safety and territorial claims shape how places are used, particularly in parks and community hubs. By foregrounding lived experience, the study shows how social affordances take shape in neighbourhood places and give rise to uneven potentials for social and spatial capital formation. ... Read more

Across cities worldwide, millions of people engage daily in circular practices that recover value from waste and, in doing so, claim their right to the city. These self-organized ‘innate circular networks’ sustain livelihoods, shape urban culture, and provide environmental services, yet remain largely overlooked in policy and research. In Addis Ababa, they support more than 300,000 people and revalorize large volumes of discarded resources while facing growing pressures from circular economy (CE) initiatives and urban redevelopment. Drawing on immersive ethnographic fieldwork following waste workers and materials across the city, this paper examines how circularity is sustained through self-organized relations between people, resources, and spaces. Conceptually, it introduces the notion of ‘innate circular networks’ to challenge dominant CE imaginaries that privilege formal infrastructures over grounded urban practices. Findings reveal complex socio-spatial systems governed through tacit rules, mutual trust, and everyday negotiation, yet also shaped by tensions and inequalities. Minalesh Tera emerges as a ‘real circular space’ for resource revalorization, collective learning, and grassroots innovation. Beyond resource circulation, these networks perform socio-cultural and economic functions within Addis Ababa. The study argues that these networks constitute critical urban infrastructure and that inclusive circular governance should build on existing practices rather than displacing them. ... Read more

Outdoor play can positively affect children’s personal development and health. But how do children perceive and value public space as a place to play, and which factors influence their perceptions and valuations? A total of 89 Dutch children, aged 5 to 11 years, participated in the study. Using photovoice and walk-along methodologies, children told and showed us their favorite and least favorite play spaces. Results showed that children perceive their environment in diverse ways. On the one hand, they engage with the play opportunities offered to them in public space, and on the other hand, they employ creativity to reinterpret the public space to their liking by transforming ordinary objects into play attributes. Physical environmental factors (variety of play spaces, challenging play elements, materials, hygiene) and social environmental factors (the presence of other children, bullying, social safety) influence how children perceive and value public space. Improving these factors might contribute to more child-friendly, play-friendly and therefore healthy cities. ... Read more

Urban planning and public health have a long-lasting and intertwined relationship. Throughout history, major public health crises have often been linked to issues within the physical environment, while solutions are also sought through urban planning. This chapter explores this relationship through the lens of neighbourhood models over the last century. The models comprise Howard's ‘garden cities’ and Perry's ‘neighbourhood unit’ from the early 20th century, New Urbanists ‘Traditional Neighbourhood Development’ and ‘Transit-Oriented Development’ models from the second half of 20th century, and the recent (21st century) hyperlocal models like the ‘15/20-minute city’. These models emerged as responses to their respective eras’ pressing public health and socio-ecological challenges. A comparative retrospective assessment of these models investigates their evolution and relation to public health. Although they are developed in different spatiotemporal contexts, the comparison of the models reveal common themes proposed as remedies to create healthier, liveable residential environments, as well as the limitations and fallacies during their implementation in different contexts. As we confront the ongoing challenges of public health, climate change, and rapid urbanisation, there is a growing need to recalibrate neighbourhood models in a more relational and contextual manner while prioritising health, sustainability, and social equity. This comparative retrospective assessment of neighbourhood models lays the foundation to derive insights and implications for the discussions on the role and nature of models for the future design of residential environments. ... Read more

China’s urban regeneration often faces challenges in integrating physical and non-physical complexities while fostering inclusive stakeholder collaboration. Despite extensive studies exploring the urban conditions and stakeholder roles, it is not explicit how design strategies emerge from the environment interpretation, nor how stakeholders are effectively incorporated into the design processes. Grounded in pattern language theory, a design-thinking-based theory, this study proposes a co-design framework to develop tools for urban regeneration in China. Through a three-stage process – drafting, consolidating, and validating patterns – it clarifies the process of co-design by applying pattern-driven design thinking. Applied to Hanzheng Jie, Wuhan, a historic area, the framework developed 20 patterns, with the representative patterns discussed for their connotations and implications. Results demonstrate its potential to enhance inclusive urban regeneration, advance pattern language theory, and provide adaptable design tools for China’s evolving urban contexts, with implications for future research in diverse urban settings. ... Read more

This study explores whether and in what ways the socio-spatial dynamics of Verhalenhuis Belvédère contribute to community resilience and social connections in Katendrecht. Located in Rotterdam, the neighbourhood’s layered social history and evolving diversity make it a distinctive context for studying community places. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, the research identifies key socio-spatial qualities that position the place as an important form of community infrastructure, enabling network-building and reinforcing people–place ties. The findings highlight three ways the place supports community resilience: (1) fostering spatial agency through participatory co-creation of the physical environment; (2) promoting networked solidarity across diverse social groups in the neighbourhood; and (3) enabling identity grounding through cultural recognition and memory work connected to Katendrecht’s heritage. The study demonstrates how such community-driven places can help counteract the disruptive effects of urban renewal while maintaining neighbourhood identity. These insights underscore the importance of public space design that prioritises cultural recognition, grassroots participation, and flexible programming to support communities undergoing transformation. Operationalising socio-spatial frameworks through resident-collective management, participatory governance, and targeted design interventions can enable integrated design–planning–policy approaches, helping planners and policymakers foster more connected and resilient communities. ... Read more

Hospital environments often promote sedentary behaviour, despite physical activity being essential for recovery. This study explored patients’ perspectives on how the physical hospital environment supports physical activity after cardiothoracic surgery. A cross-sectional survey study was conducted among patients, who underwent elective cardiothoracic surgery, using a self-developed questionnaire. Descriptive statistics ranked barriers, facilitators and potential supportive features, while Spearman correlations explored associations of barriers/facilitators with participant characteristics and hospital factors. Of 221 eligible patients, 106 (48%) responded, with 70% being male, a median age of 65 years and a median hospital stay of seven days. Main barriers included medical devices, while main facilitators included convenient layout, comfortable furniture and information about physical activity. Greater support from healthcare professionals was associated with fewer barriers and more facilitators. The results showed that the physical hospital environment should promote physical activity, with a key role for healthcare professionals to help patients leverage these opportunities. ... Read more

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) proposes integrating the management of urban water cycles into urban planning and design as a strategy to better respond to water challenges in the urban environment. Proposed frameworks try capturing urban water sensitivity in terms of generic, transferable principles. In this article, we trace the water history of Kozhikode in India to make a plea for epistemic justice and context-specificity in the definition of water sensitivity, recognizing how the quality and direction of contemporary urban water flows are the outcome of particular – (post-)colonial, neo-liberal – histories. We mobilize insights from political ecology to do this. Concepts like waterscapes and hydro-social imaginaries help acknowledge that waters and cities co-evolve to create often highly uneven waterscapes. This usefully denaturalizes and thereby politicizes urban water sensitivity, giving much-needed prominence to the ‘who’ questions: who will benefit (most), and who will stand to lose? For Kozhikode, with its fishing enclaves, sacred groves, ponds, and a colonial canal crossing its coastal plain, treating water sensitivity as a mere techno-managerial question risks reinforcing middle-class dominance and aspirations, while also provoking ecological decay. ... Read more

The provision of vitality in neighbourhoods has become a prominent issue on the urban agenda, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, due to its profound impact on the well-being of urban residents. While the foundational principles of vitality are well covered in the literature, with a growing number of empirical studies measuring it in different contexts, neighbourhoods are not always designed accordingly. The mass housing areas from the previous century are even on the verge of demolition due to a lack of vitality. This highlights a gap between the theory and the methods for translating it into practice. Although practical interventions to sustain or enhance neighbourhood vitality exist, a comprehensive toolkit addressing the foundational principles is needed. In this regard, this research examines exemplary projects and strategies aimed at promoting neighbourhood vitality, focusing on Rotterdam. It employs the pattern language methodology to translate these novel and practical tools from specific cases into generic design patterns. The retrieved list of design patterns for promoting vitality, varying in scale and temporality, serves as a framework for both design and communication during the future revitalisation of neighbourhoods. ... Read more

Public spaces have a significant impact on social interactions and community dynamics, particularly during times of disruption and change. This study investigates the role of public space in fostering community resilience. It introduces a conceptual framework to identify the attributes and characteristics of public space that support or hinder the social environment, in the context of community resilience. Through an interdisciplinary narrative literature review, the research examines how social dynamics—particularly communal interactions and activities—are influenced by spatial features and how these contribute to a community’s adaptive capacity during crises. The findings highlight that public spaces act as vital community infrastructure, facilitating community networks and fostering connections between people and place, all of which are key components of community resilience. As such, the research highlights the importance of recognizing various spaces within the public domain with these attributes, while emphasizing the significance of diverse public spaces to nurture communities and support their resilience. More so, by integrating public spaces into broader networks, the study suggests that fostering belonging, identification, and reinforcing essential structures enhance community resilience, transcending the role of conventional public spaces concepts. ... Read more

The built environment significantly contributes to current socioenvironmental crises, necessitating systemic change. Circularity and the commons are re-emerging as potential pathways for such transition. A circular built environment (CBE) aims to close resource loops, but its implementation is often slow and neglects social and local aspects. The commons framework emphasizes local involvement and sustainable self-management of shared resources. However, the intersection of circularity and the commons in spatial production is underexplored. This paper explores their relationship as “innate spatial tactics,” referring to the ways ordinary people interact with the built environment to meet their daily needs. Through a literature review, we developed a conceptual framework of “circular commoning,” encompassing three dimensions: resources, people, and governance. We applied this framework to analyze 16 empirical examples of circular commoning in contemporary urban settings. Our research shows that circularity and the commons are closely linked and mutually beneficial. Circular commoning involves diverse resources, changing social roles, and innovative governance. We identified three forms of circular commoning as innate spatial tactics: building circular, circular use of space, and creating spaces for circular activities. The framework developed here provides a basis for further action research. The practice review demonstrates that circular commoning is not only a distant utopian ideal but is enacted daily in diverse urban contexts. Such often-overlooked innate spatial tactics can offer valuable lessons for pathways toward a CBE involving principles of a circular society. Additionally, they can help shape new narratives and channel hope for practical progress towards circular futures. ... Read more

In the format of a round-table discussion, we bring together voices from different department, sections and roles within TU Delft to explore questions arising from the current issue of the magazine. Unlike the elusive concept of atopia or the grim reality of dystopia, utopia is a well-known vision of an ideal society, challenging us to rethink perfection in our complex world. As we delve into this timeless theme, each participant has provided their unique perspective, creating a mosaic of insights and examples that illuminate the aspirational landscapes of an imagined perfect world. ... Read more

Numerous studies show the benefits of wilderness to humans and the environment. Therefore, preserving and developing wilderness areas within urban settings are crucial to combat and mitigate challenges like biodiversity decline resulting from urbanization. According to previous studies, human-wilderness interactions can be contradictory, e.g., relaxing while feeling anxious and insecure. How individuals perceive and comprehend intentional urban wilderness, what dimensions contribute to their perceptions, and how these dimensions influence the visitors’ perceptions remain to be investigated. Selecting Jiangyangfan Ecological Park (Hangzhou, China) as a survey case, this research investigates if and how people perceive intentionally incorporated and designed urban wilderness and how various dimensions of attributes shape their perceptions. This study identified three dimensions that may contribute to visitors’ perceptions of the urban wilderness; namely, cognitive landscape attributes, perceived environmental attributes, and their visitation experience. A mixed-method approach was employed using a questionnaire, mental maps, and environmental behaviour observation as diverse data sources to assess visitors’ urban wilderness perceptions and comprehension from the three dimensions. Results indicate a high propensity to visit the park as an urban wilderness. Our findings also revealed that visitors’ perceptual environmental attributes, e.g., the existence of vegetation and waterbodies and encounters with wild animals, as well as their visit experiences, e.g., their satisfaction with the visit and their motivation for experiencing nature, significantly influence their perceptions. In contrast, prior knowledge and experience-based cognition of urban wilderness attributes showed no significant influence on their perceptions. Moreover, attributes like plant diversity, water visibility, and plant density emerged as critical factors shaping visitors’ perceptions. These findings underscore the importance of considering visitors’ on-site perception of environmental attributes and actual visit experience when assessing the value and acceptability of urban wilderness areas. Future implications of this study for urban wilderness planning and management were also discussed. ... Read more

A vision for the TU Delft campus, location Delft, 2040 ... Read more

Visie voor de TU Delft Campus, locatie Delft. ... Read more

In rapidly growing urban contexts, water plays a pivotal role in the transitions the urban environment goes through to sustain the quality of life of its population. Spatial planning and design are essential for the facilitation and manifestation of such transitions. Focusing on Bhuj, a rapidly growing Indian city in a hot arid desert climate, its crucial yet changing sensitivity to urban water flows over time is assessed. The concept of water sensitivity is coined as a goal to pursue by the Water-Sensitive Urban Design approach. In India, however, much of the urban design and development processes are of an unplanned and informal nature, seemingly inhibiting the water sensitivity of urban transitions. Reviewing spatial planning paradigms and their manifestation in space in Bhuj over time, however, brings to light a pre-existing water sensitivity. Yet it also shows a shift from the supply security-oriented ingenious watershed expansion to catastrophe-steered and urban expansion-driven water system negligence. Review and discussion of past and present urban water transitions and management points out drivers, barriers, and their interrelationships, to enable and advance water-sensitive urban development tied to local history, traditional knowledge, and context specificities. ... Read more

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) identifies water sensitivity as a goal for cities to strive for and develop towards. Certain cities may face rapidly changing socioeconomic and urban dynamics, or lack of data and documentation, greater than those in which WSUD has been conceptualized. Landscape-informed, design-based fieldwork methods of walking, observing, describing and drawing can help to understand how hydrological systems are linked to local water cultures and practices. This shifts the definition of water sensitivity away from a universal ideal future scenario to one that is mutable and determined by local qualities. The case of Kozhikode, India, illustrates how fieldwork and its forms of representation, with an emphasis on the design processes that WSUD calls for to be operationalized, can shed light on urban hydro-cultural dimensions. These dimensions extend hydrological indicators by incorporating cultural insights to be integrated into WSUD, thereby enhancing the context specificity and appropriateness of the concept. As such, design methodologies and the hydro-cultural dimension offer valuable contributions to WSUD and can facilitate its adoption worldwide. ... Read more

While the wilderness conservation movement continues to grow on an international scale, a wilderness conservation system is steadily being established in China. However, as urbanization continues to accelerate, the exploitation of natural wilderness spaces in cities is inevitable. How to preserve and design wilderness as much as possible within the expanding city limits has become an issue of concern for urban planners and landscape architects in China. After reviewing the background and research progress of urban wilderness-related topics, the practical experience of urban wilderness in the Netherlands is explored. Three representative cases of different scales and types are selected to analyze the background, design considerations and site functions respectively. The four principles of nature first, wilderness protection, human intervention control and public participation are summarized, and design strategies for urban wilderness landscape at different scales in Chinese context are extracted, providing international experience for the construction of Chinese wilderness system. ... Read more

Interviewen is een veelvoorkomende wetenschappelijke methode on informatie te verzamelen. Belangrijk is dat het interview inhoudelijk goed aansluit bij jouw ontwerpopgave of onderzoek. Daarnaast helpt het enorm om te werken met een systematische aanpak bij het vastleggen, ordenen, analyseren en rapporteren van de informatie uit je interviews. En natuurlijk is een goede gespreksvoorbereiding belangrijk. De interviewmethode omvat drie fasen: 1. Voorbereiding en randvoorwaarden 2. Uitvoering, gespreksvoering en vastleggen data, en 3. Uitwerking, analyse en rapportage. Interviews zijn zeer geschikt voor het in kaart brengen van percepties, ervaringen, opvattingen, verwachtingen, en het ophalen van kennis uit de praktijk. Om de complexiteit van datgene wat je onderzoekt te begrijpen, is het van belang dat je in het interview zelf flexibel kunt opereren. Gesprekken verlopen nog al eens anders dan tijdens de voorbereiding wordt verondersteld. Dit hoofdstuk biedt concrete handvaten voor alle onderdelen van het proces. ... Read more

Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) offers an approach for alternative spatial organisation of cities and infrastructures fit to address urban and climatic challenges. However, its relevance in all contexts is questioned and transferability concerns arise when mainstreamed. Instead of considering water sensitivity as guiding concept for the ultimate state of an urban environment, this article argues that water sensitivity is a context- and culture-specific variable, dictated and confined by other site variables. As such, WSUD implies an interaction between water sensitivity as context and concept, in which context shapes concept and concept provides focus on how to address context. Sensitivity therefore refers to the thoughtfulness of reading a context, highlighting to what extent site-specific urban conditions can be identified to be considered water-sensitive. This understanding enables local urban designers and water managers to appropriate and engage in WSUD fit for the cultural, socio-economic, and physical context. ... Read more