Differences in stakeholders' perceptions, lack of commitment, unused knowledge, and interfering, ineffective, measures are just some of the problems encountered in sustainable urban development projects. Collaborative decisionmaking approaches tackle these problems by creating a shared understanding of the problems faced and of ways to address them. The authors explore how the combined application of two techniques, a decision-support tool and a simulation game, can support decisionmaking for sustainable urban development. The techniques are applied in decisionmaking for real and in fictional sustainable urban renewal projects. Benefits and challenges of this combined approach are discussed based on experiences in seven applications. The main finding is that the use of the decision-support tool combined with the simulation - gaming procedure can support agenda setting and help create a shared understanding of problems and potential solutions in the field of sustainable urban renewal.
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In 2017 the municipality of Amsterdam launched a programme to combat a housingshortage and realise ambitious societal goals for 32 of its most deprived neighbourhoods. After decades of urban renewal projects, these areas still scored poorly on most socio-economic indicators. The programme aims to develop more affordable housing for low- and middleincome households, to revitalise the existing public spaces of these neighbourhoods and to improve the residents’ socio-economic position. In addition, the progressive municipal council installed in 2018 intends to democratise urban renewal processes with the aim of increasing community involvement.
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Cities are constantly in transition. Spatial production worldwide is generated by governments, business, developers, informal settlers, et cetera; sometimes cities expand, but increasingly there is a process of reurbanisation of existing urban patterns contronted with deterioration, dysfunctionality, or obsolescence. In many situations, funding, power and technology determine how the course of urbanisation. Communities, groups and individuals with limited access to funding, power and technology need empowerment to exercise their right to shape and improve their own evironment, while respecting health, equity and ecology. The research centre for Smart Urban Redesign (SURD) at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences seeks to work on this empowerment for communities. This study presents SURD’s approach to neighbourhood revitalisation.
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Post-war urban neighbourhoods in industrialised countries have been shown to negatively affect the lifestyles of their residents due to their design. This study aims at developing an empirical procedure to select locations to be redesigned and the determinants of health at stake in these locations, with involvement of residents’ perspectives as core issue. We addressed a post-war neighbourhood in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands. We collected data from three perspectives: spatial analyses by urban designers, interviews with experts in local health and social care (n = 11) and online questionnaires filled in by residents (n = 99). These data provided input for the selection of locations to be redesigned by a multidisciplinary team (n = 16). The procedure yielded the following types of locations (and determinants): An area adjacent to a central shopping mall (social interaction, traffic safety, physical activity), a park (experiencing green, physical activity, social safety, social interaction) and a block of low-rise row houses around a public square (social safety, social interaction, traffic safety). We developed an empirical procedure for the selection of locations and determinants to be addressed, with addressing residents’ perspectives. This procedure is potentially applicable to similar neighbourhoods internationally.
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This booklet holds a collection of drawings, maps, schemes, collages, artistic impressions etc. which were made by students during an intense design moment in the project (re)CYCLE Limburg, which took place in December 2016. Students of Built Environment, Facility Management, Social Work and Health & Care cooperated in making designs and developing strategies for urban renewal in Kerkrade West (Province of Limburg, the Netherlands). The study focused on the importance of qualitative and shared public spaces. The local community (inhabitants, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs, municipality, housing corporation) was actively engaged by sharing knowledge and information, ideas and opinions. These reflections are part of the Limburg Action Lab (part of the Smart Urban Redesign Research Centre). It engages in research by design on innovative and tactical interventions in public space, that might enhance the identity, sustainability and socio-spatial structure of neighbourhoods.
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As in many large European Cities, Amsterdam is confronted with a large housing boom, partially fuelled by shortcomings in (affordable) housing development. Simultaneously, there is a persistent need to improve neighbourhoods with a weak socioeconomic status. The municipal government aims to both, develop major housing schemes and designate redevelopment areas. In 2017, Amsterdam presented a new urban renewal program for 32 designated deprived neighbourhoods in three boroughs. The program sets out physical housing ambitions, but also intends to anticipate and integrally address social, economic and ecological challenges. To ensure the developments are inclusive, the active involvement of local communities in the decision making process is central part of the new policy. However, a large body of planning literature emphasizes the tendency of large redevelopment processes to become exclusive rather than inclusive. To avoid these pitfalls, new spatial and programmatic governance arrangements may need to be developed. In close collaboration with the municipality and local communities, we conduct empirical action-research on Amsterdam’s urban regeneration program to develop and test promising solutions with practice. The paper analyses the planning process as it evolves. Based on framing theory, we structure and analyse the expected governance barriers hindering the inclusivity during the course of the planning process. The insights gathered regarding inclusivity provide critical input in the conceptualisation of new more forceful inclusive spatial planning strategies. In conclusion, a variety of spatial and programmatic governance arrangements are presented to reinforce the inclusivity of planning processes for a sustained impact of large-scale urban renewal programs.
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Amsterdam strives to combat a shortage of homes by launching an ambitious housing development scheme for 32 designated most deprived neighborhoods. After decades of urban renewal projects, the local communities still suffer from difficult to resolve socioeconomic problems. Aside from a minimum of 40% social dwelling units, 40% of homes are reserved for the middle class and only 20% for high-end. Mixing income segments on its own will not lead to an improved socio-economic status of the inhabitants thus, a new urban renewal program has been developed. On top of that, the new progressive municipal council, intends to democratise the urban renewal processes towards more community-led developments with local support and structural solutions. Some experts may argue that we require a radical new way of planning whilst others counter, that current standardised planning procedures cannot be easily changed.In partnership with themunicipality, we reflect on Amsterdam’s urban regeneration program and enhance collective crossborder learning by organising monthly learning sessions with the managers involved. Now that thefirst phases of the planning process have been completed, we follow a Grounded Theory (GT)method to structure the collected data and analyse the perceived barriers hindering the modernisation of planning practice. Observations and promising actions to make the participation process more inclusive, interactive and influential will be discussed. One example is that some managers on the ground who have to work with the system, are taking short cuts in planning procedures to ensure that citizens’ needs are incorporated in the developed plan. These disruptiveinterventions may be used to formalise and implement new policy and more effective pathways ofcommunity-based development.
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The debate on tourism in cities, both academically and in practice, has for a long time taken place in relative isolation from urban studies. Tourism is mostly addressed as an external agent and economic force that puts pressure on cities rather than as an interdependent part of city systems. The recent debate on city touristification and excessive dependence on the visitor economy, as well as the associated processes of exclusion, and displacement of local city users, serves to highlight how tourism is an integral part of urban developments. A wider urban perspective is needed to understand the processes underlying the tourism phenomena and more transdisciplinary perspectives are required to analyze the urban (tourism) practices. The current article seeks to contribute to such a perspective through a discussion of the literature on urban and tourism studies, and related fields such as gentrification, mobilities, and touristification. Based on this, theoretical reflections are provided regarding a more integral perspective to tourism and urban development in order to engage with a transversal urban tourism research agenda.
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This article analyses four of the most prominent city discourses and introduces the lens of urban vitalism as an overarching interdisciplinary concept of cities as places of transformation and change. We demonstrate the value of using urban vitalism as a lens to conceptualize and critically discuss different notions on smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable just cities. Urban vitalism offers a process-based lens which enables us to understand cities as places of transformation and change, with people and other living beings at its core. The aim of the article is to explore how the lens of vitalism can help us understand and connect ongoing interdisciplinary academic debates about urban development and vice versa, and how these ongoing debates inform our understanding of urban vitalism.
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Comprehensive understanding of the merits of bottom-up urban development is lacking, thus hampering and complicating associated collaborative processes. Therefore, and given the assumed relevancies, we mapped the social, environmental and economic values generated by bottom-up developments in two Dutch urban areas, using theory-based evaluation principles. These evaluations raised insights into the values, beneficiaries and path dependencies between successive values, confirming the assumed effect of placemaking accelerating further spatial developments. It also revealed broader impacts of bottom-up endeavors, such as influences on local policies and innovations in urban development.
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