A Multidimensional Typology of Open Spaces in Europe

To improve the ecosystem service provided by open spaces in dispersed urban areas is a key challenge for sustainable spatial development in Europe. The typology presented in this article illustrates the different potentials that open spaces in territories-in-between have across 10 cases in Europe. Unlike other typologies, neither function nor form is used for the classification, but the potential interaction of open spaces with social, technical and ecological networks. Therefore, the typology informs regional spatial planning and design about the potential ecosystem services in networked urban regions. Thereby the importance of territories-in-between, which are often neglected by mainstream spatial planning and design, for sustainable development is highlighted

Celebrating Spatial Planning at TU Delft 2008-2019:

The Department of Urbanism of the TU Delft is organised in five sections: Spatial Planning & Strategy (SPS), Urban Design, Environmental Modelling, Urban Studies, and Landscape Architecture. SPS has three distinct and complementary pillars: (i) Spatial Planning & Strategy, (ii) Regional Design and Planning, and (iii) International Urbanisation & Development Planning. Spatial Planning at TU Delft has an evident, but unique relationship with spatial design, focusing on the development and transformation of spatial form, composition, patterns, structures, and networks. Spatial Planning, together with Design and Technology, form the key pillars to Urbanism at Delft University of Technology. This integrative approach to urbanism has a long history at TU Delft and makes the University’s academic profile in spatial planning highly distinctive and also highly ranked. All over the world, cities and regions are challenged by the risks and opportunities associated with accelerating challenges arising from migration, climate change, the fourth industrial revolution, globalisation, rising inequality, and political instability. They face urgent questions with respect to sustainable growth and transformation that can only be tackled in an interdisciplinary integrative way that promotes social, economic, and environmental sustainability and spatial justice. In other words, they are not only concerned with what to do (i.e. the objectives of spatial planning) but also with how to do it (i.e. processes of democratic citizen engagement and governance). Over recent decades, spatial planning, policy-making and territorial governance have changed drastically. First, trends of deregulation and decentralisation have had a large impact on traditionally strong spatial planning authorities, such as national governments and national bodies of planning. They have repositioned themselves and gotten new responsibilities, but regional and local planning authorities have had to adapt as well. Additionally, at least in the European Union, private stakeholders and civil society have been given much more room to co-create spatial plans and interventions with those planning authorities. Spatial planning has developed into an inter- and transdisciplinary activity, especially in advanced economies. Secondly, vision and strategy-making have become mainstream in spatial planning with an increased understanding of the complex, uncertain, networked, and dynamic nature of cities and regions. Planning for resilience and sustainability, for organic growth, for flexibility, and for adaptivity means that planning has become a process of intensive interaction, negotiation, and communication between involved stakeholders, looking for shared visions and strategies to go forward. Such a process is helped by diverse tools and ways of approaching the tasks at hand, with the formulation of alternative spatial scenarios and by vision and strategy-making. These tools contribute to a new planning paradigm that focuses on communication and consensus-seeking in collaborative decision-making processes. This has increased the need for urbanism-planning professionals who can lead, guide, facilitate, mediate, manage, and steer those processes, across a variety of spatial scales, from neighbourhood to city-region and beyond. Thirdly, spatial planning has become a more digitised and digitally supported process in many ways. In several places, spatial planning processes are based on E-participation and innovative ways of citizen engagement. Urban (big) data and sophisticated 2D and 3D analysis, visualisation, modelling, and decision-making tools are providing urbanism professionals with more input on the city than ever before, making urban policy-making processes potentially more transparent, explicit, and democratic, and strongly underpinned and supported by actual and dynamic data that allows for evidence-based decision- making. The changes within the professional field of spatial planning come with many questions that can be researched at the University , focusing on issues of: fairness, spatial justice, and democracy building; the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in spatial development processes, including the roles and values of planners spatial decision-making processes and how they are informed by socio-spatial data (analysis). SPS contributes to teaching and research on these questions and contributes to the understanding of theoretical perspectives on the nature, scope, and effects of spatial planning. Our section focuses on (i) international and European territorial governance and policy-making, including their potential for democracy building, (ii) contemporary methods of spatial planning, spatial planning instruments, and spatial planning systems, (iii) territorial evidence and impact assessment. By doing so, the Section contributes to theories of spatial planning and builds on SPS’s strong tradition of international comparative studies. TU Delft is the leading institution in the Netherlands for research and education on Urbanism. It has an established track record of excellence in research, teaching, and learning, confirmed by external assessments

Characteristics of Territories-in-between

Much of physical territory of the Europe does not fit classic ‘urban–rural’ typologies but can best be described as ‘territories-in-between’ (TiB). There is considerable agreement that TiB is pervasive and very significant. However, typologies of territory or spatial development continue to employ only degrees of either urban or rural. Similarly, spatial planning and territorial development policies rarely make use of the notion of in-between areas but tend instead to divide the territory into urban and rural zones. Questions have been raised therefore about the lack of understanding of territories-in-between and their negligence in planning policy. This paper contributes to a better understanding of TiB, by proposing a method for their characterisation and mapping. It asks if there can be a common definition of TiB that reflects consistent and distinctive characteristics across the great variety of spatial development contexts in Europe. It proposes spatial and demographic criteria for their definition, mapping and comparison. The comparison with widely used urban–rural classifications shows that the presented classification of TiB has three advantages: (i) it maps the complexity of the spatial structure of urbanised areas on a regional scale, and thereby helps to overcome the prevalent idea that urbanised regions are characterised by a spatial gradient from urban centre(s) to rural periphery; (ii) it emphasises the network structure of territories-in-between and the underlying connectivity of places with different functions and (iii) it raises awareness that in some parts of Europe a settlement pattern has developed that cannot be understood as either urban or rural

Interviewen

Interviewen is een wijze van vragen, kijken en luisteren die je met weinig moeite als wetenschappelijke verantwoorde techniek kan gebruiken. Daartoe moet je als interviewer twee belangrijke spelregels hanteren. • Het vraaggesprek moet een duidelijke relatie hebben met de ontwerpopgave of de probleemstelling van het onderzoeksproject, waarvoor informatie wordt verzameld. • De ingewonnen informatie moet systematisch worden vastgelegd, geordend en gerapporteerd. Een goede voorbereiding draagt bij om de gewenste informatie te verkrijgen. Maar het is ook van belang dat je in het feitelijke gesprek flexibel kunt opereren. Gesprekken kunnen immers heel anders verlopen dan gedurende de voorbereiding wordt verondersteld. En soms is dat maar goed ook. Het onverwachte kan je onvermoed, waardevolle informatie opleveren

Bouwkunde als wetenschap in Delft

Bouwkunde binnen de wetenschappen

Ingenieurswetenschappen

Zoals in hoofdstuk 1 is aangegeven, neemt bouwkunde als een van de ingenieurswetenschappen een bijzondere plaats in binnen de wetenschappen; een wetenschap ‘in its own right’. In dit hoofdstuk gaan we daar nader op in. Om te beginnen wordt het doel van de ingenieurswetenschappen beschreven en vervolgens wordt de vraag beantwoord wat de ingenieurswetenschappen karakteriseert. Daarbij wordt eerst ingegaan op het verschil met andere wetenschappen, gevolgd door een duiding van twee karakteristieken van de ingenieurswetenschap: de combinatie van ontwerp en onderzoek en context specificiteit

Wetenschap

De ervaring leert dat veel beginnende studenten bij wetenschap denken aan het standaardmodel daarvan, met kenmerken als ‘waar’, ‘bewezen’ en ‘algemeen geldend’. Dit model komt echter voort uit een bepaalde opvattingover wetenschap; er zijn er meerdere. In deze paragraaf komen, na een in troductie van verschillende soorten wetenschap, drie wetenschapsopvattingen aan de orde en criteria voor wetenschappelijkheid

Interviewen

Interviewen is een veelvoorkomende wetenschappelijke methode on informatie teverzamelen. Belangrijk is dat het interview inhoudelijk goed aansluit bij jouwontwerpopgave of onderzoek. Daarnaast helpt het enorm om te werken met eensystematische aanpak bij het vastleggen, ordenen, analyseren en rapporteren vande informatie uit je interviews. En natuurlijk is een goede gespreksvoorbereidingbelangrijk. De interviewmethode omvat drie fasen:1. Voorbereiding en randvoorwaarden2. Uitvoering, gespreksvoering en vastleggen data, en3. Uitwerking, analyse en rapportage.Interviews zijn zeer geschikt voor het in kaart brengen van percepties, ervaringen,opvattingen, verwachtingen, en het ophalen van kennis uit de praktijk. Om decomplexiteit van datgene wat je onderzoekt te begrijpen, is het van belang dat je inhet interview zelf flexibel kunt opereren. Gesprekken verlopen nog al eens andersdan tijdens de voorbereiding wordt verondersteld. Dit hoofdstuk biedt concretehandvaten voor alle onderdelen van het proces

Text and image: The relationship between text and image in research

This chapter addresses the roles, relationships and complementarity between text and image. It builds upon work done at the Research into Practice research group at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), which investigates issues of academic research in design-based disciplines. This text challenges the cliché that an image is worth more than a thousand words to argue that there are crucial complementary roles for text and image, in which text communicates aspects that image cannot and viceversa