This essay is a contribution to the research project ‘From Prevention to Resilience’ funded by ZonMw. Motivated by the Covid-19 pandemic, this research project explored how public space and forms of civic engagement can contribute to working towards more resilient urban neighborhoods. The project engaged …

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 …

The liveability of cities worldwide is under threat by the predicted increase in intensity and frequency of heatwaves and the absence of a clear spatial overview of where action to address this. Heat stress impairs vital urban functions (Böcker and Thorsson 2014), hits the local economy (Evers et al. …

The relation between the police and the public is under threat, one of the reasons being the closing down of police stations in the neighborhoods and city centers. At the city edges police campuses arise with a defensive character and restricted space for the public. A different approach is demonstrated …

Promoting healthy and active lifestyles is an important objective for many governing agencies. The design of active urban environments can be an effective tool to encourage more active behaviors and water features can attract people, improving their experience of the urban space. To explore the potential …

What is the agorà? Reading the Oxford English Dictionary definition, we find written «in ancient Greece, an open space used for markets and public gatherings». This definition is arguably precise. Contemporaries might think it is a simple marketplace, but this is an insufficient definition that does …

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vital role urban areas play in supporting citizens’ health and well-being (Ribeiro et al., 2021). In times of (personal) vulnerability, citizens depend on their neighbourhood for performing daily physical activities to restore their mental state, but public spaces …

The current Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of urban public spaces in achieving health and social well-being (Dobson, 2021; Poortinga et al., 2021), prompting policymakers and urban planners to rethink their approach to the design of these spaces. They now propagate adapting urban public …

Urban planning for climate change is a complex topic for historical and large cities like Alexandria, which are also coping with economic and demographic pressures. In this project the design of water engineering is drawn into the horizon of the local population, by mapping several containment measures …

In a design and research studio of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture six students investigated between September and December 2020 the transition to that post-fossil era, we visualized the expression of the post-fossil city of the future, we explored systems and solutions that we cannot yet imagine. …