Metropolization process in Santiago de Chile has been strongly influenced by neoliberal rationale in the field of urban planning. A diffuse interaction between the forces of the urban land market, national-global trends of capital agglomeration and fragmented governance have led to a highly segregated socio-spatial structure. These processes have fostered the economic marginalization of the most vulnerable municipal areas unable to profit within the current model of market-driven development. During the last five years, the Chilean government has raised the necessity to address these issues through new governance and planning national agenda. Based on this context, this graduation thesis investigates the evolution of those urban issues in the Metropolitan area of Santiago (MAS) and evaluates a collaborative spatial planning strategy for three vulnerable municipalities by using adaptive scenarios. A paramount emphasis is focused on the social and economic activation of the morphological urban tissue of these areas by using a multi-scalar approach.

The Greater Bay Area, known as the GBA, ultimately incorporates 11 main cities (consisting of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao Special Administrative Region (Macao SAR) as well as the municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing) into an urbanised population of over 70 million people. It represents a significant opportunity to shape the future of the Pearl River Delta region.

In the last decades, this region has experienced an unprecedented rise of urbanisation and a rapid economic growth positioning itself as the future centre of global economy. However, the uneven development has been the reason behind several environmental and socio-spatial challenges that threaten the future of this mega region. The research intends to comprehend these issues under the fragmentation perspective, by classifying and analysing the challenges within three main themes (Society, Economy and Environment) in three different scales. Furthermore, the research proposes that the integration of bio-physical infrastructures (Green and blue network) respecting the natural ecosystem and the delta conditions throughout the whole process of development and urbanisation, will help redefine the future of globalisation in the GBA. In order to achieve that, an explorative method using the ‘strips game’ was used as a method to produce a vision and urban scenarios on multiple scales providing functional and spatial distributions. This method was conducted in Hong Kong to give access to the feeling and environment in question.

This project displays an explorative attempt at redefining the megablock planning concept. The Greater Bay Area (GBA), as the site of interest, is undergoing rapid metropolization, with a risk of resulting in the formation of indistinguishable, generic urban structures. The fast development and the migration process have defined a region with multiple identities and diverse groups of people living in it. The social and spatial implications of the metropolization process reflect a segregation between the actual planning system and the diverse people that live in this region. The proposal aims to transform the megablock, a traditional, structural form of planning that is a form of de-contextualized, top down planning based around an economic, private-driven market, into a planning tool that enables the cohabitation of multiple lifestyles that creates social networks of interaction, activates spaces of the existing context and relates them with new developments. Therefore, the redefining of the megablock intends to find how rapid urbanization and the enhancement of distinct local and external identities can go hand-in-hand in a multiplicity of urban contexts, creating a balance between quantity and quality and creating a process of place making that allows the enhancement and strengthening of the notion of identity in a local, urban and regional scale. The Megablock becomes a sustainable prototype for future urbanization and a morphological spatial structure that re-establish a spatial order and framework for the transitions and relations between diverse places and people.

Many cities in Africa are confronted with the challenges of a rapidly expanding population, urban geography and the service provision it requires. Also Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s main economic and cultural city, is with 6 million inhabitants and a project population of 10 million by 2030, classified as one of the fasted growing cities in Africa. Consequently, livelihood activities are diversifying and expanding, while spaces for doing so are hardly available or threatened to disappear. The general lack of resources and knowledge incapacities make many development plans dependent on the investment of foreign and popular interests. These ‘development’ schemes ought to answer to sprawling cities through increased accessibility and the premise of economic growth, but ignore local welfare and do not recognise the potentials around public space and infrastructure that shape socio-economic livelihoods. This thesis argues to look beyond the one way story of infrastructural development for solely city scaled interventions and proposes alternative infrastructure at places where different scales meet. This infrastructure focusses not only on roads, but is designed to integrate development, environment, living and justice as critical projects. The spatial strategy can be regarded as a methods for urban planning and designing which addresses 4 strategic urgencies that are besides being defined by site specific conditions, also based upon the research on Dar es Salaam as an African city.

In European suburban areas, shopping centres are the main attractor, socially and commercially. Overcoming the scale of small town centres and providing a common regional place, these world interiors of capital are building a new territorial identity.
Nevertheless, today online shopping is denaturating shopping centres, turning them into entertaining centres.
The project deals with very different scales to envision a future scenario for the Western European dispersed city and to frame to future the role of the mall for these territories. The suburban commons proposes a mediation between the public, the private and the collective to imagine a new regional centre that breaks the sole commercial function and provides a place to gather, a space of appearance, linked to its territory. It imagines a sustainable, convivial scenario that rethinks the shopping centre and prepares the territory for a possible post-mall phase.

This research and design thesis addresses the transition towards a post-capitalistic economy and explores a corresponding spatial development perspective for Leipzig (Germany) and its hinterland. The starting point of this project is the theoretical assumption that there is a mutual relation between spatial and economic development.
From there, it builds up the hypothesis that current neoliberal capitalism will fail and explores a spatial strategy, which prepares Leipzig and its hinterland for this event. At its base is the establishment of a self-sufficient regional agriculture and the spatial decentralization of the region. Sketching post-capitalistic socio-economic relations, in which the common good and not individual profits are the goal, the project explores the transformation of various example places in Leipzig and the region. In the end, this thesis promotes a new form of spatial organization, in which the city and its hinterland form one socio-economic and political unit.

Urbanization in developing country does not necessarily means a good thing. An immediate transformation along with the population boom and the property industry transform the city and its people extensively. This applies to the kampung settlement in the Indonesian city. There was a time when kampung’s people can serve food to any guest, a family member came to the sick people house for a care-treatment, or merely collective inhabitants keep an eye to the safety of the neighborhood, all for nothing but basic courtesy within each other. People always proud when their kampung’s neighborhood is memorably friendly to live in, thus the sentiment that the city is a “harsh” place is a common notion that lurks behind the growing urbanization.
The growing tourism industry along its property business is the power engine of Yogyakarta’s urbanization. Despite the emergence of modern restaurant, shopping mall, and hotels, there comes the resistance and protest from the citizen as they does not have any control towards what is happening that transform their living environment in undesirable way. Inclusion and participatory no longer respected, the power to change the city lies in the hand of the view. This research tackle the posed problem by synthesizing idea derived from the socio-cultural perspective to redistribute again the shaping power for urbanization to the people. The do-it-yourself patterns from the social tradition, the communication for deliberation, and the local-wisdom arguments for place making are explored as an alternative strategy to the recent urbanization. It aims for the more endogenous urbanization that shaped the living environment into a friendly city.

Virtual reality technology has captured the human imagination since before the first ceiling mounted glasses were invented in the 1960’s. Curiosity towards seeing what we can’t see and experiencing what we can’t experience, is one of the drivers behind societal and scientific progress.

In 2012, the technology saw a new phase of development start. Now, professions like architecture and urban design, professions that try to communicate ideas, have started to implement the technology. The entertainment industry is running with it. The first commercial sets have been a success. This time, it seems that VR is here to stay.

What happens then with the environment that we can see? This question becomes relevant now. Cyberpunk - a submovement of science fiction - always shows us the dystopian image. The metropole becomes neglected as people leave behind the physical world and loose themselves in the digital.

These works of fiction have functioned as a red flag and have inspired this thesis. Within, the discussion is not whether or when VR is going to feature in the daily lives of people - the question is what the effect will be.

Through the lense of VR development, current developments in the urban public space are scrutinized. The objective: to make sure that neglecting the city is not the path humanity will end upon.

The thesis explores the social potential of space i.e. the social logic of space to enhance resilience of society. As social resilience is defined as the capacity of society to cope, adapt or transform societal relations towards external stress, space that is a ‘construction’ and a function of the structure of society hosts the ability in fostering societal robustness against external perturbations (Alan H. Kwok, 2016; Raffestein 2012; Hillier,1984).
World Global Risks report 2018 considers extreme weather events and natural hazards as a major disturbance towards risk perception (WEF, 2018). At present, Mumbai as well as other cities are at risk from natural and man-made hazards (floods, fires, ethnic violence etc.). Although, Mumbai did witness acts of benevolence by its people during the times of crisis such as the floods, the past and present situation of Mumbai’s spatial and social fragmentation underlines threats towards external stresses. Besides this, the geographical isolation of Mumbai, a man-made archipelago with a population of over 22 million (Review, 2018) makes the accessibility to resources that could maintain and foster resilience even more difficult. Hence, the reliance on social solidarity as a means towards fostering social resilience is a key to safeguarding the future of Mumbai and its people. Although, resilience is not a final state but a process, it is the system’s ability to maintain its integrity and to return to its original state, a state of equilibrium, normality, when it is confronted with a disruption or hazard” (Holling,1973).
Through the case of Dharavi - Mumbai, a historic, unplanned settlement located in the heart of Mumbai that faces challenges and highlights potentials in the formation and maintenance of social solidarity, the thesis aims at developing a strategic spatial framework towards fostering social resilience under the purview of the ‘social logic of space’. It explores the spatial capacity in time to enhance social solidarity against external stresses (man-made and natural).

This dissertation builds upon research that considers how cities operate as Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS). It focuses on how certain characteristics of urban form can support an urban environment's capacity to self-organize, enabling emergent features to appear that, while unplanned, remain highly functional. The main thrust of the work is to unpack how elements of the urban fabric might be considered as elements of a complex system and then identify how one might design these elements in a more deliberate manner, such that they hold a greater embedded capacity to respond to changing urban forces. The research is predicated on the notion that, while such responses are both imbricated with, and stewarded by human actors, the specificities of the material characteristics themselves matter. Some forms of material environments hold greater intrinsic physical capacities (or affordances) to enact the kinds of dynamic processes observed in complex systems than others (and can, therefore, be designed with generating these affordances in mind). The Ph.D.'s primary research question is thus:

What physical and morphological conditions need to be in place within an urban environment in order for Complex Adaptive Systems dynamics to have an opportunity to arise - such that the physical components (or ‘building blocks') of the urban environment have an enhanced capacity to discover functional configurations in space and time as a response to unfolding contextual conditions?

The dissertation is based on a compilation of articles that have, for the most part, been published in academic journals.

The aim of the graduation project is a (re)development plan for a neighbourhood in a deteriorating district of Naujininkai, Vilnius. A neighbourhood faces the major issues which are common in the districts around the city centre built in Soviet times. Worn out building environment, ageing, low-income population lead to threats of social segregation. A revitalization of this kind of neighbourhoods is an important issue for the city. There is a need to attract more people in the more central areas because the city has huge sprawl issues what is the reason for a low density of the city.
One of the objectives of a neighbourhood plan was to revitalize the area by involving the community and other stakeholders in planning and upgrading processes. A proposed neighbourhood plan encourages people by giving ‘guidelines and recommendations’ to improve their environment. ‘Guidelines and recommendations’ explain how the improvements could be made, and how ‘win-win’ situations between private- public sector could happen in the upgrading processes.
The other objective of the design was to switch planning from the top- down to participatory and from zoning to strategic.
 The proposed neighbourhood plan is alternative planning method which encourages participation, provides guidelines and one development vision/plan.

The third objective of the design was to solve dilemma between control and self-organization.
 It is proposed to integrate a neighbourhood plan with its spatial plan and guidelines into the interactive online tool. An interactive tool should help to organize the dialogues between the community, private sector, and municipality, to make the easier process for the implementation of the neighbourhood regeneration plan.

In general, people and environment are two main properties in today’s strategy plans of urban development, which are also essential elements of urban design (Carmona et al, 2010). Designers promote more on human dimension design that reflects spatial dimension of environment such as the eye level city in their urban design topics. Gehl (2010) contributes to the idea of “ poor maintained urban environment” and “car oriented”, which causes the deserted space. In some cases, place has different meanings with space. According to Tuan (1977), space could be described as a location without any human beings, but place refers to how people use and perceive the space. In fact, only the minority of urban space is being used as public place. On the one hand, those unpopular spaces do not consider into human approach, lack attractive functions and reasons for people to use it. On the other hand, some poor urban space work as main transportation hub that is crowded with people in the low quality of human psychological aspects. Transportation hub (railway station and metro station) is a special space that holds both necessary and optional activities. Recently, the square of the transportation hub that aims to serve passengers and citizens suffers from many problems of public qualities (Juxin, 2015). Some spatial interventions that refer to human factor aspect are essential for improving nature quality of transportation hubs.

This graduation project focuses on the opportunities within democracy to overcome inequality on social, economic and political aspects. The opportunities will be focused on changes within public space. The research will start with an investigation of the starting point of the project. Then, the methodology used to come to the research results will explained. Thirdly, the evaluation of the research outcomes will be presented. This will be done through presenting the historic development of Brussels and an analysis of the democratic system in Brussels with its relation with public space. Lastly, conclusions & recommendations for the design will be constructed. These will be used as the startingpoint for part II of the graduation project, in the corresponding booklet.

METRO POLIS refers to the reciprocal relation between the urban environment and the metro system in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2016, its largest fish market was planned to relocate, leaving behind a vast territory in one of the central wards. As a strategy to connect this post-industrial territory to the everyday of the Tokyoites, a metro station is proposed in a former market hall of the Tsukiji Shijio in Chuo-ku, Tokyo. The design aims to release the potential of the transport hub as an urban centre, by redefining the metro station as a generous, inclusive place for the Tokyoites. Also, an urban plan is proposed which combines housing, commercial functions and offices.