Based on the understanding of the built environment as result of competing claims on space that m... more Based on the understanding of the built environment as result of competing claims on space that must be resolved via recognition, fair distribution of burdens and benefits of our human association, respect and care for the planet and just procedures to decide on those claims, Spatial Planning and Strategy is a chair in the Department of Urbanism within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology, committed to helping create sustainability, resilience and spatial justice through the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, the Paris Climate Agreement and the European New Deal, among other frameworks. This commitment is reflected in activities, events, and courses. We are concerned with knowledge about the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of strategic and urban planning tools -visions, strategies, plans and programmes.
To improve the ecosystem service provided by open spaces in dispersed urban areas is a key challe... more 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.
This is the third volume in the "Manifesto for the Just City" series published by TU De... more This is the third volume in the "Manifesto for the Just City" series published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing. This is a project spearheaded by the Centre for the Just City at the Delft University of Technology. The Manifestos in this book endeavour to envision alternative, positive urban futures as a counterpoint to prevailing cynicism and political disillusionment. This exercise is largely based on the ideas of Professor Faranak Miraftab on practices of hope and decoloniality. The 81 Manifestos written by 313 students from 63 universities around the world come in the wake of a four-part workshop in October 2022, in which TU Deft together with its many partners, invites students from all over the world to listen to the accounts of leading academics and practitioners whose knowledge touches aspects of spatial justice and to articulate their own ideas for what makes the just city. The scholars invited in 2022 included Professor Faranak Miraftab from the University of Illinois ...
The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are p... more The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Integrated affordable housing, for instance, has come to the top of the agenda once again, now propelled by the realisation that slum dwellers (a staggering 1 billion people around the world) and homeless people are particularly vulnerable to health crises and other societal shocks. The pandemic has been saluted as an opportunity to implement far-reaching transformation of our societies towards sustainability and justice, but little signs of systemic change have actually surfaced. For example, several cities around the world claim they will overhaul public space, take space from private cars, and invest more on green spaces, bicycle paths and quality public mobility. But little has been said about addressing the structural causes of inequality. The champions of the circular economy salute the pandemic as a new dawn for more human-centred capitalism, for the abandonment of exploitation and unfair distribution, and a world where workers can find decent housing, health, work and leisure.But what is actually happening on the ground?This UTC explores some of these issues by giving a platform to people with knowledge from the ground. It also discusses the many advances being made towards an inclusive green transition, through the European Green Deal and a growing activist movement in the UK.This event was organised by GUL, the Global Urban Lab of the TU Delft University of Technology, a communication and action platform that brings visibility and articulation to TU Delft staff and students doing work on topics of urbanisation in the Global South.Spatial Planning and StrategyHousing Institutions & GovernanceUrban Studie
The stretched scope of urbanism, with its large range of inputs drawn from various disciplines, s... more The stretched scope of urbanism, with its large range of inputs drawn from various disciplines, seems to create confusion about the nature and the form of an education in urbanism at university level. We verify the existence of several communities of practice who value practice and theory differently. Assessing the work of students becomes an arduous task, because different communities of practice value different things and seem to see little relevance in aspects that do not comply with their own views. In this way, practitioners seem to see less value in textual expression, while academics seem to struggle to value a practiceoriented education and spatial strategies outside a structured discourse that grounds the design. This paper presents an experience in the MSc program in urbanism where we believe the desired academic standards are attained. It describes on the one hand the aspirations we have for the urbanism program with respect to academic standards, and on the other hand the concrete outcomes of the methodological and R&D project programs. This paper describes how the education program tackles the relationship between research, planning and design by acknowledging that there are different value systems in the different fields of urbanism, and the way we have dealt with this issue in our MSc program.
The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urba... more The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urban challenges in the region. It is the result of a 3-year collaboration between the European Commission and all 42 UfM Member States, aiming to improve the quality of life for all citizens by building better, more inclusive, climate-resilient communities.The Plan promotes science-led, evidence-based, inclusive and integrated planning, investment and implementation of urban projects, with coordination at the local, national and regional governance levels. It involves cooperation between national and local authorities, intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions, and other stakeholders.Spatial Planning and StrategyHistory & Complexit
By reading Darwin's introduction in the classic ‘The Origin of Species’, we learn about a sci... more By reading Darwin's introduction in the classic ‘The Origin of Species’, we learn about a scientific attitude and about text structure and style. This is an exercise on academic writing skills prepared for the methodology course of the Urbanism master track at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft.
This game explores different styles of spatial planning and different “types” of planners. The ob... more This game explores different styles of spatial planning and different “types” of planners. The objective of this game is to make planning student sensitive to the variety of planning styles around the world. The types of planners described here (rather humorously) are based on the meticulous research conducted by Karina Sehested from the University of Copenhagen. While Sehested based her research on Danish municipal planning departments, we have extrapolated her results to include types not described in her paper. We did so inspired by Nadin and Stead’s text “European Spatial Planning Systems” (2008), in which the authors explore different styles of planning in Europe. Based on these two texts, we came up with a set of “ideal types” of planners. These ideal types obviously might not exist in their “pure form” in reality, but describe, we believe, a variety of planning attitudes and planning positions students might encounter in the workplace.
The objective of this case study is to investigate EU Cohesion policy performance and communicati... more The objective of this case study is to investigate EU Cohesion policy performance and communication and the impact on citizens’ attitudes to the EU in Limburg, the Netherlands. The case study also contextualises comparative COHESIFY research findings and provides more in-depth insights into the performance and communication of Cohesion policy. The selection criteria for the Dutch case studies included Cohesion policy eligibility and financial intensity, programme types, governance system, European identity (also related to the specific geographical features and experience of cross-border cooperation), and Cohesion policy implementation setting and performance.
To improve the ecosystem service provided by open spaces in dispersed urban areas is a key challe... more 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.
There has been a renewed interest in informal urbanization among urban thinkers in the last decad... more There has been a renewed interest in informal urbanization among urban thinkers in the last decades. In their contributions to the discourse on urban informality, we often find an overvaluation of informality's positive aspects. The underlying argument is that governments and planners should 'learn' from informal settlements in the global south, as informal settlements represent a more authentic, 'honest' and politically desirable form of urban development. Other authors identify intrinsic formal qualities that should be emulated. In this text we challenge these viewpoints with an account of the political history of São Paulo's informal periphery and its struggle for rights and democratization. The hypothesis we explore is that the informal urbanization of the peripheries of São Paulo is closely tied to a plea for rights and the emancipation of the working classes during the second half of the twentieth century in Brazil. Informal urbanisation, in this framework, is not a solution for housing shortage, but a necessary step taken by the oppressed in their struggle to be included in formal structures of citizenship.
The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urba... more The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urban challenges in the region. It is the result of a 3-year collaboration between the European Commission and all 42 UfM Member States, aiming to improve the quality of life for all citizens by building better, more inclusive, climate-resilient communities.The Plan promotes science-led, evidence-based, inclusive and integrated planning, investment and implementation of urban projects, with coordination at the local, national and regional governance levels. It involves cooperation between national and local authorities, intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions, and other stakeholders.Spatial Planning and StrategyHistory & Complexit
This paper describes governance arrangements in regional spatial planning and water resources man... more This paper describes governance arrangements in regional spatial planning and water resources management at the regional level from a normative point of view. It discusses the need to integrate spatial planning and resources management in order to deliver socially sustainable integral territorial management. To accomplish this, the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP) was analysed as a case study, in order to demonstrate the challenges met by public administrators and planners regarding the integration of water management and spatial planning in a highly complex urbanized regional setting. Our main observations relate to the increasing adoption and integration of multilevel-networked governance principles in water resources management. Strategies include devolution, cross-sectoral integration and public participation, which are likely to improve the governance of water resources management. However, although these strategies have achieved some degree of success, they are not yet fully integrated in all levels of water resources management and are only poorly integrated in regional spatial planning levels. The lack of coordination of policy making and implementation across sectors and across territories is a critical factor limiting the effectiveness of water management at the regional level in São Paulo.
This book presents an inventory of actvities developed by the section of Spatial Planning and Str... more This book presents an inventory of actvities developed by the section of Spatial Planning and Strategy (SPS) at the Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology.Spatial Planning and Strateg
Based on the understanding of the built environment as result of competing claims on space that m... more Based on the understanding of the built environment as result of competing claims on space that must be resolved via recognition, fair distribution of burdens and benefits of our human association, respect and care for the planet and just procedures to decide on those claims, Spatial Planning and Strategy is a chair in the Department of Urbanism within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology, committed to helping create sustainability, resilience and spatial justice through the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, the Paris Climate Agreement and the European New Deal, among other frameworks. This commitment is reflected in activities, events, and courses. We are concerned with knowledge about the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of strategic and urban planning tools -visions, strategies, plans and programmes.
To improve the ecosystem service provided by open spaces in dispersed urban areas is a key challe... more 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.
This is the third volume in the "Manifesto for the Just City" series published by TU De... more This is the third volume in the "Manifesto for the Just City" series published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing. This is a project spearheaded by the Centre for the Just City at the Delft University of Technology. The Manifestos in this book endeavour to envision alternative, positive urban futures as a counterpoint to prevailing cynicism and political disillusionment. This exercise is largely based on the ideas of Professor Faranak Miraftab on practices of hope and decoloniality. The 81 Manifestos written by 313 students from 63 universities around the world come in the wake of a four-part workshop in October 2022, in which TU Deft together with its many partners, invites students from all over the world to listen to the accounts of leading academics and practitioners whose knowledge touches aspects of spatial justice and to articulate their own ideas for what makes the just city. The scholars invited in 2022 included Professor Faranak Miraftab from the University of Illinois ...
The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are p... more The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020). Integrated affordable housing, for instance, has come to the top of the agenda once again, now propelled by the realisation that slum dwellers (a staggering 1 billion people around the world) and homeless people are particularly vulnerable to health crises and other societal shocks. The pandemic has been saluted as an opportunity to implement far-reaching transformation of our societies towards sustainability and justice, but little signs of systemic change have actually surfaced. For example, several cities around the world claim they will overhaul public space, take space from private cars, and invest more on green spaces, bicycle paths and quality public mobility. But little has been said about addressing the structural causes of inequality. The champions of the circular economy salute the pandemic as a new dawn for more human-centred capitalism, for the abandonment of exploitation and unfair distribution, and a world where workers can find decent housing, health, work and leisure.But what is actually happening on the ground?This UTC explores some of these issues by giving a platform to people with knowledge from the ground. It also discusses the many advances being made towards an inclusive green transition, through the European Green Deal and a growing activist movement in the UK.This event was organised by GUL, the Global Urban Lab of the TU Delft University of Technology, a communication and action platform that brings visibility and articulation to TU Delft staff and students doing work on topics of urbanisation in the Global South.Spatial Planning and StrategyHousing Institutions & GovernanceUrban Studie
The stretched scope of urbanism, with its large range of inputs drawn from various disciplines, s... more The stretched scope of urbanism, with its large range of inputs drawn from various disciplines, seems to create confusion about the nature and the form of an education in urbanism at university level. We verify the existence of several communities of practice who value practice and theory differently. Assessing the work of students becomes an arduous task, because different communities of practice value different things and seem to see little relevance in aspects that do not comply with their own views. In this way, practitioners seem to see less value in textual expression, while academics seem to struggle to value a practiceoriented education and spatial strategies outside a structured discourse that grounds the design. This paper presents an experience in the MSc program in urbanism where we believe the desired academic standards are attained. It describes on the one hand the aspirations we have for the urbanism program with respect to academic standards, and on the other hand the concrete outcomes of the methodological and R&D project programs. This paper describes how the education program tackles the relationship between research, planning and design by acknowledging that there are different value systems in the different fields of urbanism, and the way we have dealt with this issue in our MSc program.
The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urba... more The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urban challenges in the region. It is the result of a 3-year collaboration between the European Commission and all 42 UfM Member States, aiming to improve the quality of life for all citizens by building better, more inclusive, climate-resilient communities.The Plan promotes science-led, evidence-based, inclusive and integrated planning, investment and implementation of urban projects, with coordination at the local, national and regional governance levels. It involves cooperation between national and local authorities, intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions, and other stakeholders.Spatial Planning and StrategyHistory & Complexit
By reading Darwin's introduction in the classic ‘The Origin of Species’, we learn about a sci... more By reading Darwin's introduction in the classic ‘The Origin of Species’, we learn about a scientific attitude and about text structure and style. This is an exercise on academic writing skills prepared for the methodology course of the Urbanism master track at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft.
This game explores different styles of spatial planning and different “types” of planners. The ob... more This game explores different styles of spatial planning and different “types” of planners. The objective of this game is to make planning student sensitive to the variety of planning styles around the world. The types of planners described here (rather humorously) are based on the meticulous research conducted by Karina Sehested from the University of Copenhagen. While Sehested based her research on Danish municipal planning departments, we have extrapolated her results to include types not described in her paper. We did so inspired by Nadin and Stead’s text “European Spatial Planning Systems” (2008), in which the authors explore different styles of planning in Europe. Based on these two texts, we came up with a set of “ideal types” of planners. These ideal types obviously might not exist in their “pure form” in reality, but describe, we believe, a variety of planning attitudes and planning positions students might encounter in the workplace.
The objective of this case study is to investigate EU Cohesion policy performance and communicati... more The objective of this case study is to investigate EU Cohesion policy performance and communication and the impact on citizens’ attitudes to the EU in Limburg, the Netherlands. The case study also contextualises comparative COHESIFY research findings and provides more in-depth insights into the performance and communication of Cohesion policy. The selection criteria for the Dutch case studies included Cohesion policy eligibility and financial intensity, programme types, governance system, European identity (also related to the specific geographical features and experience of cross-border cooperation), and Cohesion policy implementation setting and performance.
To improve the ecosystem service provided by open spaces in dispersed urban areas is a key challe... more 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.
There has been a renewed interest in informal urbanization among urban thinkers in the last decad... more There has been a renewed interest in informal urbanization among urban thinkers in the last decades. In their contributions to the discourse on urban informality, we often find an overvaluation of informality's positive aspects. The underlying argument is that governments and planners should 'learn' from informal settlements in the global south, as informal settlements represent a more authentic, 'honest' and politically desirable form of urban development. Other authors identify intrinsic formal qualities that should be emulated. In this text we challenge these viewpoints with an account of the political history of São Paulo's informal periphery and its struggle for rights and democratization. The hypothesis we explore is that the informal urbanization of the peripheries of São Paulo is closely tied to a plea for rights and the emancipation of the working classes during the second half of the twentieth century in Brazil. Informal urbanisation, in this framework, is not a solution for housing shortage, but a necessary step taken by the oppressed in their struggle to be included in formal structures of citizenship.
The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urba... more The UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 establishes a common vision to tackling urban challenges in the region. It is the result of a 3-year collaboration between the European Commission and all 42 UfM Member States, aiming to improve the quality of life for all citizens by building better, more inclusive, climate-resilient communities.The Plan promotes science-led, evidence-based, inclusive and integrated planning, investment and implementation of urban projects, with coordination at the local, national and regional governance levels. It involves cooperation between national and local authorities, intergovernmental organisations, international financial institutions, and other stakeholders.Spatial Planning and StrategyHistory & Complexit
This paper describes governance arrangements in regional spatial planning and water resources man... more This paper describes governance arrangements in regional spatial planning and water resources management at the regional level from a normative point of view. It discusses the need to integrate spatial planning and resources management in order to deliver socially sustainable integral territorial management. To accomplish this, the Metropolitan Area of São Paulo (MASP) was analysed as a case study, in order to demonstrate the challenges met by public administrators and planners regarding the integration of water management and spatial planning in a highly complex urbanized regional setting. Our main observations relate to the increasing adoption and integration of multilevel-networked governance principles in water resources management. Strategies include devolution, cross-sectoral integration and public participation, which are likely to improve the governance of water resources management. However, although these strategies have achieved some degree of success, they are not yet fully integrated in all levels of water resources management and are only poorly integrated in regional spatial planning levels. The lack of coordination of policy making and implementation across sectors and across territories is a critical factor limiting the effectiveness of water management at the regional level in São Paulo.
This book presents an inventory of actvities developed by the section of Spatial Planning and Str... more This book presents an inventory of actvities developed by the section of Spatial Planning and Strategy (SPS) at the Department of Urbanism, Delft University of Technology.Spatial Planning and Strateg
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Papers by Roberto Rocco