Abstract. In recent years circular economy has become more important for the development of many places including cities. Traditionally, urban development policies have mainly been aiming to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of neighbourhoods. However, technical and ecologic aspects have their effects too and need to go hand in hand. This paper is based on an urban area experiment in the Dutch city of Utrecht. In order to assess urban area developments, typically rather straight-forward quantitative indicators have been used. However, it has proved more complicated to assess multifaceted developments of the area studied in this paper. With the City Model Canvas a multi-layered model is being used to better assess the impact of the urban development being studied. Key findings include that the project studied resulted in more space for companies from the creative industry and the settlement of local ‘circular’ entrepreneurs and start-ups, although it remains unclear to what extent these benefit from each other’s presence. The increase in business activity resulted in more jobs, but it is again unclear whether this led to more social inclusion. From an environmental point of view the project activities resulted in less raw materials being used, although activities and public events bring nuisance to the surrounding neighbourhoods.
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To promote and develop management instruments for a sustainable urban fringe that contributes in a balanced way to city region competitiveness
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In recent years, it has become a commonplace to argue that cities should be the focus point of sustainable development. Various authors have presented a variety of arguments why cities should be the preferred target to foster sustainable development-focused innovation; - The average consumption of resources of urban dwellers is higher. - The population of cities is growing continuously, while rural populations stabilize. - Deteriorating living conditions and segregation in cities caused by processes of gentrification of traditional neighbourhoods that drive out lower income groups to the suburbs. - Cities are ‘concentrated’ emitters of pollutants and therefore solutions and re-use might be easier to implement. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11185013 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karel-mulder-163aa96/
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Designing cities that are socially sustainable has been a significant challenge until today. Lately, European Commission’s research agenda of Industy 5.0 has prioritised a sustainable, human-centric and resilient development over merely pursuing efficiency and productivity in societal transitions. The focus has been on searching for sustainable solutions to societal challenges, engaging part of the design industry. In architecture and urban design, whose common goal is to create a condition for human life, much effort was put into elevating the engineering process of physical space, making it more efficient. However, the natural process of social evolution has not been given priority in urban and architectural research on sustainable design. STEPS stems from the common interest of the project partners in accessible, diverse, and progressive public spaces, which is vital to socially sustainable urban development. The primary challenge lies in how to synthesise the standardised sustainable design techniques with unique social values of public space, propelling a transition from technical sustainability to social sustainability. Although a large number of social-oriented studies in urban design have been published in the academic domain, principles and guidelines that can be applied to practice are large missing. How can we generate operative principles guiding public space analysis and design to explore and achieve the social condition of sustainability, developing transferable ways of utilising research knowledge in design? STEPS will develop a design catalogue with operative principles guiding public space analysis and design. This will help designers apply cross-domain knowledge of social sustainability in practice.
The impacts of tourism on destinations and the perceptions of local communities have been a major concern both for the industry and research in the past decades. However, tourism planning has been mainly focused on traditions that promote the increase of tourism without taking under consideration the wellbeing of both residents and visitors. To develop a more sustainable tourism model, the inclusion of local residents in tourism decision-making is vital. However, this is not always possible due to structural, economic and socio-cultural restrictions that residents face resulting to their disempowerment. This study aims to explore and interpret the formal processes around tourism decision-making and community empowerment in urban settings. The research proposes a comparative study of three urban destinations in Europe (The Hague in the Netherlands, San Sebastian in Spain and, Ioannina in Greece) that experience similar degree of tourism growth. The proposed study will use a design-based approach in order to understand tourism decision-making and what empowers or disempowers community participation within the destinations. Based on the findings of primary and secondary data, a community empowerment model will be applied in one the destinations as a pilot for resident engagement in tourism planning. The evaluation of the pilot will allow for an optimized model to be created with implications for tourism planning at a local level that can contribute to sustainable destinations that safeguard the interests of local residents and tourists.
There is increasing interest for the use of Virtual Reality (VR) in the field of sustainable transportation and urban development. Even though much has been said about the opportunities of using VR technology to enhance design and involve stakeholders in the process, implementations of VR technology are still limited. To bridge this gap, the urban intelligence team of NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences developed CycleSPEX, a Virtual Reality (VR) simulator for cycling. CycleSpex enables researchers, planners and policy makers to shape a variety of scenarios around knowledge- and design questions and test their impact on users experiences and behaviour, in this case (potential) cyclists. The impact of infrastructure enhancements as well as changes in the surrounding built environment can be tested, analysed an evaluated. The main advantage for planners and policy makers is that the VR environment enables them to test scenarios ex-ante in a safe and controlled setting.“The key to a smart, healthy and safe urban environment lies in engaging mobility. Healthy cities are often characterized by high quality facilities for the active modes. But what contributes to a pleasant cycling experience? CycleSPEX helps us to understand the relations between cyclists on the move and (designed) urban environments”
