Abstracts Archive

The systemic approach and complexity theory now allow the city to be interpreted as a dynamically complex system in which each element is interacting with the others. This makes it complex to jointly evaluate the phenomena related to the different subsystems that can be identified in the urban syste...

Trees provide essential ecosystem services in the urban environment. From a noise pollution perspective, trees disperse and scatter sound waves in street canyons and urban courtyards. A handful of studies have been published on the sound attenuating effects of trees, or tree belts, in street canyons...

Amsterdam Zuidas Even though the definition of 'innovation districts' leaves room for different interpretations, we see that many innovation districts have a fairly modernist spatial layout. When we think of Paris La Defense, Canary Wharf London or Amsterdam Zuidas, we don’t think of messy cities....

This workshop aims to bring the issue of affordability and accessibility (back) into discussions on the sustainable further development of middle European cities. It is hard, maybe even impossible to miss current discussions on the sustainable further development of our built environment. Every mayo...

This paper provides an overview of urban research on noise, glare, heat, and air quality, coverinboth individual domains and combined analyses. It is aimed at scholars in the field of built environment research, as well as urban designers and policy makers in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan issues ...

There is an ongoing open debate about achieving sustainable development (SD) within planetary boundaries. In this context, it is unsurprising to question the role of urban areas in speeding up an SD. The unstoppable urbanization process has been accompanied by looking at cities as places with higher...

Temporary placemaking through adaptive reuse is an evolving urban practice, originally stemming from informal occupations and progressively becoming more integrated into the planning and management of temporary unused properties. It arises through the organization of communities, more or less sponta...

In recent decades, there is an increasing realization that growth oriented economic models are harmful for sustained livability of our biosphere. This also holds for cities that continue to attract a growing share of the world population. The paradox of growing cities is that, while offering all kin...

Due to climate change, rising temperatures lead to more extreme heat stress in urban areas. Last summer, there were poignant images of people looking for shade in cities. Trees are effective measures to provide shade and decrease the perceived temperature. However, trees cannot grow in healthy condi...

My research aims to embed the Randstad to the postmodernist model of cities by the Los Angeles School. I compare the characteristics of LA and the Randstad, arguing that the Randstad is a mutation of the model. My arguments land on perspectives such as geographical structure, production regime, natu...

Workshop proposal: From the application of smart technologies by municipalities to community-led initiatives for sustainable practices, conflicting perspectives on a 'good life' in the city emerge. This workshop session posits that frictions and controversies are essential democratic prerequisites f...

All talk of the future contains faster chips, more bandwidth, higher resolutions, cheaper memory, more immersiveness, smarter AI. In short; The future is more of Moore's Law. We explored several pathways in which the future of digital technology looks differently. Either because we collectively woul...

The Imperfect Peace of interstitial Spaces in Belfast:- Belfast, Northern Ireland is an imperfect, work-in-progress city that has seen its fair share of conflict over the last few centuries. The most recent conflict, euphemistically dubbed ‘The Troubles’, divided Belfast’s urban landscape alon...

By taking a closer look at the assumptions and methods driving the current citizen participation paradigm, this paper addresses the risk of tokenistic involvement of citizens and other stakeholders in approaches such as co-design and citizen science. These participatory processes are highly demandin...

The theme of the conference, and the concepts used, echoes the academic study of cities as complex systems. Whether urban designers are dealing with challenges like circularity, climate adaptation or inclusion – all these topics require an understanding of complex systems. Where academics refer to...

In urban design, outdoor comfort is intricately linked to the overall sensory perception, or sense-scape, of the spatial realm, which can be described through human perception and physical metrics. Seen through a physical lens, outdoor comfort relates to the interplay between environmental factors s...

Cities have played a central role in shaping the last century’s technological and economic acceleration. The share of individuals living in urban areas has itself accelerated, from 10% in the 1910s to a projected level of 68% by 2050. This development means cities will increasingly shape psycholog...

In this workshop, we want to bring together people who work on 'Measuring what Matters', such as the City doughnut, Broader Welfare and Sustainable Development goals to learn more about 1) the (dis)advantages of certain approaches; 2) lessons learned on applying it at the city level; 3) how to creat...