Mexico City currently faces several challenges deriving from historical social inequalities and ineffective governance, which hinder equitable access to water. The centralisation of water supply and drainage systems has largely failed to address local needs, leading to the marginalisation of vulnerable communities, especially populations dwelling in areas ecologically essential to the functioning of the Basin. This research argues for a renewed understanding of water’s ecological and cultural importance in the city based on water’s historical importance to Mexico and the modern misconceptions surrounding it. In this context, this work analyses the potential of a park landscape intervention in Mexico City’s cultural remains of Xochimilco, to explore new water management alternatives. Landscape architecture is presented as a critical strategy for fostering a renewed understanding and a medium-scale infrastructure based on circularity, while revealing layers in history. This thesis provides insights into how awareness, responsibility, and active engagement with water management can be promoted. It proposes that collective engagement can restore essential components of Mexico City’s hydrology, while mitigating some of the most crucial water issues, and inspire community-driven actions toward sustainable practices. Ultimately, the results put focus on the inclusion of local knowledge, strengthening the connection between people and water for an increasingly uncertain future.

This research is an early exploration into the potential of deep neural networks predicting physically-based building performance metrics on 3D urban geometry. Specifically, this work aims to predict annual solar irradiation using networks trained on point clouds. It is expected that the proposed method will allow designers to optimize their designs based on solar performance, due to the significantly lower inference time, in comparison to traditional simulation models. Furthermore, this research paves the way for generative models, which include the evaluation of performance such as solar irradiation, wind and acoustics.

Prior research has suggested several methods to predict solar irradiation on 2D building data and low resolution 3D buildings. These researches have in common that there is a lack of real observed irradiation data on buildings. Therefore, this research proposes several methods to efficiently synthesize an irradiation dataset based on 3D building geometry, which samples are larger in scale and resolution in comparison to earlier work.

Based on the synthesized datasets, several models have been trained to predict the irradiation values. Experiments have shown that a finetuned version of the model is able to predict irradiation with an average RMSE of 21 kWh/m2 with an average inference time of 0.7 seconds, on a patch of 100x100 meters. Furthermore, this thesis provides an analysis on how patch size and point sampling technique affect the prediction error of the model.

Finally, this research provides an implementation of the network in a user-friendly client-server ecosystem, that can assist architects and engineers to fine-tune their building designs in urban environments.

The project focuses on the natural conditions, the industrial and housing situation in the haor region of Sylhet, Bangladesh. The aim is to create a new housing system suitable for rural areas, combining local industry and housing. This will increase employment opportunities, improve local living conditions and alleviate the problem of over-migration from rural to urban areas. At the same time, the new housing system is flexible, adjustable and adaptable, and is able to respond to seasonal variations in natural conditions and changes in local industries.

In the Netherlands there is currently a high demand for affordable housing (Volkshuisvesting en Ruimtelijke Ordening, 2022). Earlier research indicated modular integrated housing can serve as a repercussion against this problem (Khan et al, 2022). The Dutch government wants to promote innovation in the construction industry to help solve the housing shortage, but this industry has been described as traditional instead of being innovative (Abbot et al., 2006). Startups, though, are often linked with innovation (Colombo & Piva, 2008, De Groote & Backmann, 2020; Spender et al, 2017). However, when analyzing the Dutch housing construction industry and it’s challenges through the scope of Porter’s five forces (2008), which are the threat of new entrants, power of buyers, power of suppliers, threat of substitute products and rivalry between firms in the industry, it becomes clear that it is a difficult industry for startups to enter and become competitive. This is due to the barriers of entry (e.g. high fixed costs, volatility and access to clients), powerful buyers, and possible retaliation from competitors. Furthermore, innovation and partnerships play a significant role for startups to become competitive in this industry, as partnering with incumbent firms can help the startups overcoming the previously stated challenges linked with the house building industry. These type of partnerships between startups and incumbent firms are initiated because of a startup’s innovative capabilities and are a way for the larger firm to gain access to new business models, which is beneficial for the continuity of their own firm. However, due to their asymmetric nature, these partnerships could cause different types of challenges for managers of involved companies. In this research, the innovation strategies employed by the concept housing startups and their partners are analyzed to see how they plan to become competitive. This research is meant to help (future) startups of this industry, and to provide them with guiding principles on collaborating with incumbent firms. These principals are developed after an exploratory literature review and interviews with managers of concept housing startups and their partners already operating in the Dutch house building industry.

The construction industry plays an essential role in the provision of infrastructure and particularly housing. At the same time, because of its size and participation in the national economies, the improvement of the construction industry could generate long-lasting benefits for the society. However, the construction industry has failed to adapt to modern societal and technological challenges. Offsite construction is being proposed as a solution to some of the structural failures that inhibit change and adaptation of the construction industry. Even though offsite construction has been long considered as a solution, its uptake remains low. Public authorities can play a large role in incentivizing offsite construction through public policy and as major clients of built environment products. In this research, we intend to answer the question of: How can public policy instruments at national and local levels help to overcome the barriers for adoption of offsite manufacturing in the construction industry of the Netherlands?”. An exploratory case study of the conditions in the Netherlands was used to determine adoption barriers and possible roles that public authorities could have in incentivizing offsite construction. We found five barriers that affect the prospect of adoption of offsite construction but also affect the general innovativeness of the construction industry, and fifteen barriers that are offsite construction technology-specific. Based on key activities derived from innovations systems and transformational approaches to innovation policy, we proposed different roles that the government could assume in the process of incentivizing the adoption of offsite construction. Six possible roles and instruments were proposed to improve the innovativeness of the construction industry; Five possible roles and instruments to improve the adoption and uptake of offsite construction and; ten roles to improve the uptake of offsite construction and the provision of housing.

The shortage of housing stock in The Netherlands is one of the major societal issues at present. It is predominantly the people who want to enter the housing market for the first time, the so-called ‘starters’, who face severe problems due to a lack of stock and suitable dwellings. This problem is manifest in the rental as well as in the owner-occupied housing sector. The sole focus of government policies is on housing for the lower social class and the rest of the housing market is dominated by the private sector. Objective – This research aims to define the position of starters on the Dutch housing market in comparison with the position of starters in the context of 1993. The research question that is answered is: ‘To what extent do the factors societal context, housing policy and housing stock influence the opportunities for starters on the housing market in 2018 compared to 1993?’. This question is answered on the basis of the housing choice model. This model is based on the career / life cycle theory of Priemus (1984). In the housing choice model, an extension has been made based on the theory of Dieleman (2001) which takes the external factors that determine the choice of a home into account. Methods – The research is conducted by a literature study and a quantitative analysis. The quantitative analysis has been done on data generated from an extensive quasi longitudinal study. Specifically, the data of 1993 and 2018 were compared to each other. Results – The literature study and the quantitative analysis show that the starter on the Dutch housing market has a good social position in terms of income, education and employment. However, as housing policies failed to respond to the changed social context ultimately resulting in too few houses being built, the position of the starter has deteriorated. This deteriation position is confirmed by the data analysis, which indicates that starters conform to the market situation. Firstly, it is apparent that significantly fewer starters than in the past are entering the housing market. Secondly, starters are entering the market at a much older age than their predecessors. Finally, it is clear that starters in every age category are more likely to choose to live in multi-person households to increase their payment capacity. Conclusions – The final conclusion of this study is that the opportunities for the starter on the housing market in 2018 are mainly determined by the housing stock. However, the relative scarcity of housing stock for the starter is chiefly the result of housing policies which have not responded to societal changes. This implies that housing policy is ultimately the decisive factor in the disadvantageous position of the starter. The average starter has a good starting position from a social perspective due to low unemployment, very low interest rates and good prospects for social growth. However, the starter has minimal chances of entering the housing market due to, in particular, insufficient suitable housing stock. This applies to both the free rental sector and the owner-occupied sector and homes are hardly financially accessible for starters. This good starting position has mainly been confined to the lower rental and owner-occupied sector on the housing market in 2018. This means that starters are more likely to opt for a home in a relatively expensive segment or postpone the choice for a home.