Circularity is increasingly important in the built environment, as reducing operational energy use alone is insufficient to address the environmental impact of buildings. Building services are especially relevant in this transition, because they contain large amounts of materials and are replaced more frequently than structural building elements. In hospitals, this challenge is even more complex. Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems are essential for safety, technical performance and continuity of care, which means that circularity cannot be assessed from a material perspective alone.
Although circularity in HVAC systems is becoming more relevant, it remains unclear how it can be systematically integrated into projects and especially in hospital renovation projects. The existing literature identifies circular principles and general barriers, but provides limited insight into how these interact with the specific conditions of hospital HVAC systems and the dependencies across the supply chain. This thesis therefore investigates how circularity can be systematically integrated into HVAC systems in Dutch hospital renovation projects to contribute to reducing material-related environmental impact.
The research uses a qualitative exploratory research design. A literature analysis was conducted to identify circular strategies, assessment criteria and hospital-specific conditions. This was followed by a stakeholder overview and 14 semi-structured interviews with clients, advisors, producers, a governmental actor, an end-of-life actor and researchers. The interview data were analysed using the Gioia method and synthesised with the literature findings. Based on this synthesis, six stakeholder action perspectives were developed and evaluated during an expert validation session.
The findings show that circularity in hospital HVAC systems is not mainly limited by technical impossibility, but by the interaction between technical, economic, legal, organisational and hospital-related conditions. Circular opportunities are often lost early in the project process when they are not included in design requirements, procurement criteria or investment decisions. Later in the lifecycle, implementation is further constrained by limited product and maintenance information, unclear warranty and liability conditions, fragmented responsibilities and undeveloped return logistics. In hospitals, these barriers are reinforced by strict requirements for safety, reliability, infection prevention and continuity of care.
The thesis translates these findings into six action perspectives focused on early design choices, procurement and investment decisions, legal uncertainty, product and maintenance information, return logistics, and operation and maintenance planning. The research concludes that circularity in hospital HVAC systems should be understood as a lifecycle and supply chain challenge. Moving from circular ambition to implementation requires not only practical actions, but also motivation, knowledge, coordination and enabling conditions across the supply chain.
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Urban areas face increasing pressure from climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and rapid urbanization. In response, nature-based solutions (NbS) have gained attention for their potential to address these complex challenges while enhancing urban resilience and sustainability. However, the evaluation of NbS benefits has largely relied on the ecosystem services (ES) framework, which tends to overlook relational, cultural, and context-specific values. These gaps can limit the effectiveness and fairness of NbS, especially in diverse urban contexts. To address this gap, this thesis explores whether the nature’s contributions to people (NCP) framework can offer a more inclusive approach to evaluating the benefits of NbS in urban areas.
The main research question guiding this thesis is: “How can the Nature’s Contributions to People framework be applied to evaluate the benefits of nature-based solutions in urban environments?” To answer this, the thesis follows four steps. First, it compares existing evaluation frameworks, highlighting limitations of the ES approach and how they can undermine just NbS implementation. Second, it narrows down NCP categories most relevant to urban environments, confirming the relevance of NCP for cities. It then analyses how urban NbS contribute to those categories, which formed a basis for selecting a promising NCP category for further spatial analysis. Third, it compiles suitable indicators for each NCP category. Lastly, to validate the approach, a focused selection of NCP 16 indicators was tested through a spatial analysis using ArcGIS, applied to the case study of park Frankendael in Amsterdam.
The analysis demonstrates that the NCP framework adds value by not only capturing biophysical and economic benefits but also revealing who receives these benefits, who is excluded, and how access is distributed. These insights support more inclusive and equitable urban NbS evaluation. While this study focused on one NCP category, it provides a replicable methodology for broader applications. Future research should expand indicator testing across additional NCP categories, urban context, and NbS types to further strengthen inclusive NbS evaluations.
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Urban environments must be prepared to address the impacts of climate change and mitigate its repercussions. The rapidly surging rate of urbanization is expected to instigate significant land use and land cover changes through expansion and densification of the built environment, on top of urban population growth. The Netherlands, a highly urbanized delta and densely populated country, is a prime example experiencing significant urban growth and climate-related events causing distress. This country has increasingly witnessed extreme weather events resulting in record-breaking heatwaves, drought, and precipitation, leading to the disruption of public and transport infrastructures. The Netherlands’ authorities have established new strategic spatial plans aimed at ensuring climate-proof infrastructure and climate resilience for the coming years. However, the extensive goals and targets at national and international levels complicate the situation. Key changes are being initiated at the local level, with results yet to be fully realized.

This research conducts a single case study on a renovated road intersection in Amsterdam Oost in collaboration with the Ideal(s) City project from the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. The primary aim is to investigate Amsterdam’s impacts on climate resilience and adaptation strategies. To assess the progress towards the program’s fifth ideal state of “sustainability”, a conceptual indicator list is derived from a literature review. This indicator list serves as a tool to evaluate the program’s inventory and study the sustainability outcomes of the case study. The examined indicator parameters include: (1) temperature and urban morphology, (2) surface materials, and (3) vegetation in the microclimate.

Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative secondary data, the case study is compared to the literature-based indicator list. This process results in a refined indicator set to support the development of the Ideal(s) City framework. The findings reveal a notable absence of all indicators in the inventory of the Ideal(s) City and the municipality of Amsterdam. To address this gap, recommendations are laid out: first, for the scientific community to further explore the application of indicators at traffic intersections in the city; second, for the Ideal(s) City programme to review and evaluate the existing indicators to fill the gaps and minimize the mismatch between indicators; and third, for the municipality of Amsterdam to increase the planting of trees and their variety on the median at Hugo de Vrieslaan to increase climate resilience and enhance the microclimatic conditions of the traffic intersection. ... Read more

The second episode ‘Design’ dives further into the challenges in the post-pandemic era and it illuminates possible design solutions. The documentary searches for approaches in which the design of public spaces can be updated and improved. It also questions if there is any one-size-fits-all public space at all. Depending on how and if people can get there, public space are very different as are people. Not all spaces are equally attractive and safe to stay in. From a different angle we may question; who is touched by which place, and how. Differences have become very clear during the pandemics and awareness on this has risen. Public space is also no longer static, but constantly adaptive to new needs. How can we design for this? Can we design for flexibility? Can we release physical design; if so, to what extend? The increasing need for green space is also exemplary for the post-pandemic era; partly grown out of necessity for health reasons, recreational purposes, or simply a lack of space in the house. We will have to design green spaces as a new quiet place, and for outdoor activities like sports, online connectivity in public, and/or just natural climate-adaptive space at the same time. ... Read more

The fifth episode presents 'Behaviour'. With the interviewees, the discussion on inequality is stretched to people’s behaviour in the public space. How has it changed during and after the pandemics and did their perceptions of public spaces change along? City beaches and parks have become popular, while the lack of outdoor terraces, restaurants, or discos has been manifest. Measurements taken during the pandemic have forced a change in our behaviour. While social distancing will be abandoned and masks in general, we seem to have become aware of human vulnerability. Public health will be related to public space again. What more will stay in the future? A lot of people have canceled their sports club subscriptions. Everyone is training outside now. It's really nice to see all those active people, says Annemieke Fontein; but at the same time, it also takes up space and changes the nature of parks as designed for quiet relaxation. Also in other forms, we can see that the need for connection, and in particular for encounters and meetings, in public spaces has grown. Yet whereas online presence continues to grow, thus new networks emerge and ways to meet change, thus place to meet also change. Communities gather in a wide variety of public spaces. Are new bubbles emerging? When will people come together as a whole? The culture of a place; and of a city will change and develop. Appreciating public space as a daily life environment in the Netherlands has one of the positive outcomes of the pandemics. ... Read more

The fourth episode of the series presents the topic 'Inequality'. In line with last episode, it is important to remember how mobility relates to (in)equality. The measurements taken during COVID-19 outbreak, like social distancing and staying home, has shown once more that not everyone has the same pattern, can have the same pattern, and/or is able to have equal patterns. Public spaces in different neighbourhoods have different qualities. The pandemic has shown that not everyone lives under the same conditions. Not everyone has access to equal public spaces. There is, for example, not always shaded space near the house. Places for stay in general and distances to recreational (green) spaces can differ greatly, as is the safety along the routes not equal. Power structures and distribution of resources, if we define public space along these lines, are unequal almost by definition, and thus access abilities and agency is diverse. This, generates questions: How can we realise a more inclusive network of public space? How can we create a human space, lively at the street level? What public amenities and facilities should we include? Is privately-owned public space a (fair) solution? Can we create common spaces on the roof, for example? What needs to be done in different neighborhoods to contribute to a just city? ... Read more

The third episode ‘Mobility’ follows up on the discussed new ways to approach the design of public spaces and it shines particularly the light on the changing mobility patterns. This includes general strategies to remove cars and give space back to the residents. Yet, induced by the COVID-19 crisis, these approaches move to a shift in commuting patterns: Will people keep working from home? Do they want to spend an hour in the car or on the train for four or five days when there is an alternative in the remote office and on-distance work? Other travel needs emerge, depending on the needs and desires of the different social groups. The pandemic influenced public transport. Many people feared this mode. Trust will have to be regained in order to make mobility more sustainable by traditional means. New forms of individual transport have taken off in addition. Think of micro-mobility, like shared scooters. Thus multi-modal chain mobility seems to increase in importance. The concept of the 15-minute city, in which living and working hybridise and facilities and amenities are nearby, also seems to have made a breakthrough too. Places and mobility are being brought together, in the words of Lior Steinberg. This may resemble the Dutch-rooted idea of neighborhood thought ('wijkgedachte'), making cities fairly democratic: Everyone uses similar modes of transport; bike use as examplars for the world. Still, also in the Dutch city, pedestrian traffic and social safety need to be improved. ... Read more

The first episode of the documentary Post-Pandemic Public Spaces ‘Challenges’ introduces expected paradigmatic shifts caused by the situation induced by the COVID-19 crisis. It extends the discussion on public space, which has been about making cities more sustainable and liveable while working with major transitions. During the pandemic, health has been challenged in addition. Also, new ways of using public space have become manifest. This exposes different claims. Can we continue to use public spaces as we did? Are we reverting to our old behaviour? Do we realise how important public space is? In conjecture with the challenges that already emerged before the crisis, we can question if we shouldn’t reduce traffic, for example, and kick-off from our car addiction? New challenges have an effect on the size, accessibility, and quality of the public spaces and, together with changing human needs, its presence and design remain to be essential in the future. ... Read more

With the acceleration of global urbanization, most of us will live in cities in the future. As the urban population grows, the shortage of residential buildings has become a more and more severe problem. In response to the rising demand for housing, more and more builders in Europe, East Asia, Australia and other places have begun to adopt a method called modular construction to build houses. By pre-constructing building components off-site, then combining them into a complete modular unit and transporting them to the building site for assembly, this approach can cut construction time in half and significantly reduce on-site labour costs (Hong, 2020). Modular construction is well suited for tall buildings due to its inherent topological modular form and increased number of repeatable modules (Thai, Ngo and Uy, 2020).

However, most builders currently do not consider the concept of circularity when producing modules, let alone how they will be dismantled and reused in the future. It is conceivable that in the end a large number of discarded modular units will be sent to landfills, creating a large amount of solid waste and consuming many resources to dispose of them, while the functionality of the module still can work to fit the demand. Suppose we can consider the concept of circular economy at the beginning of the project and design the modular units to be easily disassembled and reused, in that case, we will benefit not only economically, but also significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the project.

Based on the problem, it can be found that there is currently a research gap between circular economy and modular buildings. And there is still no tool for evaluating the circularity of modular buildings based on their characteristics. Therefore, this study aims to propose a method for circularity measurement based on the characteristics of modular buildings and modular construction.

A review of design strategies for circular construction reveals a number of recognised strategies. Depending on the characteristics of modular construction, design for durability, adaptability, disassembling and reusability can be selected as suitable circular strategies for modular construction. From a structural point of view, an evaluation method called Module Circularity Indicator (MCI) was developed. The method takes into account the structure, the connection method and the loading capacity of modules and assigns a weight to each structural factor based on the results of a questionnaire in order to evaluate the circularity of the modular unit on a numerical basis. Project owners and designers, especially structural engineers, can use this method to evaluate the circularity of modular projects in terms of four dimensions.

A study using student accommodation as a case was carried out to explore the economic and environmental impact of MCI. Through the case study, it was found that a higher MCI score does not lead to better economic returns and that investors need additional incentives to invest in more sustainable modular buildings. Furthermore, a higher MCI can reduce the environmental impact of a project to some extent, but the materials used in the modules are also important. In order to achieve a circular economy in the construction industry, MCI could be used as an indicator to subsidise highly circular modular buildings in order to encourage owners to invest in highly sustainable projects. This will allow the modular building industry to move towards more circular projects and reduce the environmental impact of the construction industry. ... Read more

Projected rapid urbanization in African cities is posed to put immense pressure on existing neoliberal urban planning strategies as practised in primary cities and metropolitan regions across Sub-Saharan Africa. This is despite the visible shortcomings of these neoliberal urban development models in delivering the required human development alongside economic growth, specifically for majority of the urban residents in African cities - the urban poor. The political, external agency of cities to global economies at the expense of the internal cultural-economic capacities of local communities continues to propagate inequality, with the urban poor being the most affected by these unjust systems. Continued rural-urban migration, and the growth of the peripheries in urban areas, has seen reduced productivity in traditional integrated agroecological lifestyles and this is unfortunately happening against weakened industrial and manufacturing industries within local urban contexts while propagating a producer-service industry that has fewer opportunities for the rapidly increasing vulnerable populations. The witnessed result of this for the urban peripherals is a growing impermanence of urban lifestyles and the persistence of rural-urban links, as not only escapes from the terror of rigid developmental states mindsets, but also as crucial links for producer-consumer relationships in the splintered regional food system. Unfortunately, the current governance impetus is the propagation of neoliberal models of modernization and gentrification of the urban poor, putting a strain on this crucial cross territorial relationships that sustain urban life. This rural-urban relationships therefore begin to expose the urgent need for reconciling production and consumption landscapes within sustainable city-region governance and planning practices in order to advocate for just urbanisation processes that caters to all populations. This research, critically analyses the symbiotic relationship between the current informal urbanisation structures prevalent in primary cities through the case study of Nairobi, and specifically within the peripherals, and their culturaleconomic identities associated with rural-urban transitory patterns. This investigation makes an attempt to reconnect the future of Kenyan urbanisation to social-cultural production capacities and processes as advocated by critical spatial production and governance literature. Through the main stay of Kenya’s economy - agriculture- and the critical need for sustainable transitions in agricultural and urbanisation systems, we suggest a reconciliation between the emerging social movement of agroecological urbanism at a city-region scale and the adaptiveness of prevalent cultural-economic rural-urban relationships, to suggest a regional, inclusive and adaptive approach to planning practice and governance. ... Read more

The European Union (EU) landfilled and incinerated 600 million tons of waste in 2013, which could have been recycled and returned as raw material to the economy. Resource efficiency can regain this value and bring economic, environmental and social benefits. The EU has therefore adapted the Circular Economy Package with targets to stimulate the transition to a circular economy. These targets include reusing and recycling 55% of plastic packaging waste by 2025. Member states act to achieve those targets with subsidies and funding schemes. This enables entrepreneurs to enter the market of recycled plastic with innovations to gain Schumpeterian rent. However, only approximately 50% of starting companies are still operating after 4 years. It is crucial to increase the success rate of turning new technologies into innovations in order to reach the recycling targets. Market exploration and orientation strategies can aid entrepreneurs to gain insight in the recycled plastic market. Globalized value chain research is a commonly used method, but not suitable to address the recycling industry as it is not globalized but restricted by country borders and local governance. Value chain research methodology was used, according to a handbook written by Kaplinsky & Morris from 2001, which refers to and uses globalized value chain research methodology. For the recycling industry a specific selection was made from elements mentioned in the handbook. This enabled the execution of value chain research for the not globalized recycling industry. The interview questions and topics were made based on the required data for the selected elements. This thesis focussed on the biggest market segment of post-consumer plastic packaging waste in the Netherlands. In total 149 compounders, recyclers and converters were included in a database for a selection. Of which seven companies participated, which resulted in qualitative data that gives insight into the industry and enabled answering the research question.What is required from the value chain of the plastic recycling industry to increase the use of recycled post-consumer PPW? Converters must be able to get access to regranulate with stable MFI and crystallization time characteristics in higher quantities. Compounders can initiate this with joint design projects with branding companies thereby highlighting the possibilities of their regranulate. The optimization of the product and process for their regranulate lowers the switching costs for the converter and can bring rent opportunities. It furthermore showed to increase the sales of regranulate. The compounder requests higher quantities of mono streams recycled plastic from the recycler to comply with demand for regranulate to be used for high volume consumer goods. Recyclers however, upgrade their processes to maximize output for the Dutch ‘Raamovereenkomst’, which includes a mix stream next to the mono streams. This mix stream cannot be used by the compounders to make regranulate for the converters. The recyclers claim that they can technically increase the mono streams at the expense of the mix stream, although this leads to lower profits for them. A change is therefore required in the Dutch ‘Raamovereenkomst’ to optimize for mono stream output. ... Read more

Circular building has been increasing in popularity over several years. The idea being that we should not use resources only once and then discard them, but continue using them in new products. The construction industry has responded to this by designing 'circular' buildings that can be disassembled at the end of their functional life. This leaves the question open of what to do with the current buildings stock. Since the building stock only grows with approximately 1% a year, the lion's share of buildings that will be demolished in the next 50 years has already been built. This research explores five cases that are trying to solve this issue in different ways. The case studies are used as a basis to identify drivers, barriers, and opportunities for circular demolition and component reuse. The main drivers are environmental, societal, and behavioural in nature. Whereas the main barriers are economic, behavioural, and governmental. Opportunities for entrepreneurs and governments have been identified to overcome these barriers. ... Read more