While of critical importance to facilitate a transition to climate neutral cities, the 15mC (15-minute City) concept is vague and complex. To realize the potential of the 15mC concept to bring about change, there are many potential conflicts between stakeholders representing different interests and perspectives.

Essentially, the 15mC concept highlight conflicts between spaces of flows (enabling local and regional mobility, but also including space currently used for parked vehicles), and spaces of place (emphasising urban qualities that make people want to live in such places).

Therefore, conflict over the use of space is a key issue that has to be addressed in planning for the 15mC. In many cases, such conflicts cannot be solved in consensus oriented approaches to planning and decision making.

A key goal for this project is to learn and build knowledge on planning practices and processes acknowledging the political and contested nature of such processes of change. This proposal is an important step in building knowledge about what generates conflicts in plans for the 15mC, and developing guidance on how to deal with such conflicts.

The research project, supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, aims to investigate the social production of urban spaces surrounding iconic architectural projects in East Asian cities, with a specific focus on the Taipei Performing Arts Centre (TPAC) as a case study.

Given the rise of new public cultural buildings designed by international star architects, there is a critical need to analyze the planning processes and impact of these structures on urban spaces. By drawing on Lefebvre’s theoretical framework on the production of space and non-representational theories in geography and social sciences, the study will delve into how space is socially constructed and explore the diverse perspectives and experiences of stakeholders involved in the development and utilization of iconic buildings, thereby challenging the conventional role of the architect in shaping architectural space.

The research encompasses a longitudinal ethnography of the TPAC design process and a place-based ethnography of the TPAC pre- and post-opening periods, incorporating interviews with architects, users, community members, and design document reviews. Ultimately, the study aims to introduce a novel approach to evaluating iconic buildings in an Asian context, providing insights into the intricate dynamics of urban development and cultural enhancement in rapidly globalizing cities.

• Funding: Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Across Europe, cities are trying to radically reduce their reliance on car-based mobility in order to address sustainability challenges. Two things are lacking in these efforts towards a ‘post-car’ city: a proactive vision of cities that are both sustainable and accessible without cars, and effective strategies to deal with systematic resistance to change.

EX-TRA will generate knowledge that address these shortcomings. Central to EX-TRA’s approach are transition experiments in city streets, or intentional, temporary changes in street use, regulation and/or form, aimed at exploring systemic change towards a ‘post-car’ city. By way of urban living labs in Amsterdam, Bologna, Milan, Ghent, Munich and London, the project will generate insights into:

1.    Possible combinations of physical design and regulation that increase the types of usage and inclusivity amongst users of city streets
2.    Transport and land use conditions for the purpose of enabling and improving walking and cycling accessibility in city districts
3.    Shared mobility platforms and micro-mobility and freight delivery options which complement attractive streets and accessible districts
4.    Strategies of change that can accelerate the transition towards a ‘post-car’ city.

• Funded by: Urban Europe
• Duration: 2021-2024
• Fact sheet 

A transition towards a degrowth economy is necessary to tackle the related challenges of resource scarcity and waste accumulation. Degrowth pursues socio-economic wealth while reducing material flows and reusing waste in socially responsible and ecologically regenerative ways. As a concrete approach to realizing these ends, the concept of the circular economy has gathered political momentum. However, this model will have no impact on city-regions' ecological footprint unless it challenges the regulations that dismiss certain materials as waste in the first place.

DECYCLE lays the groundwork for studying the regulatory frameworks that make it possible to revalue waste materials as a resource for city-regional development. It develops an approach termed 'institutional urban political ecology', which combines city-regions' regulatory, spatial, and ecological dimensions, usually studied separately. It interrogates the legal, spatial, and economic regulations that define waste streams' political responsibilities, geographies, and financial architecture.

DECYCLE puts forward a new concept, the material valorization regime, to explain how these regulations govern the valorization of waste across multiple scales. It develops a distinct new method of 'enactment tracing' for critical urban research, which involves mapping actors engaged in defending and contesting regulations. DECYCLE comparatively analyzes how regulations valorize streams of construction, food, and heat waste in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Vienna, and Milan. It also explains how transnational regulatory frameworks affect waste reduction at the city-regional scale.

By theorizing the relationship between regulatory change and the urban metabolism in contemporary eco-capitalism, DECYCLE sets out to free urbanization from its dependency on the production of waste and raw materials. In so doing, it lays the foundations for future socio-spatial inquiry into the institutional basis of city-regional metabolisms.

• Funded by: European Research Council - Starting Grant

The JUSTNEXUS project investigates sustainability transitions at the intersection of mobility, energy and housing. JUSTNEXUS aims to fundamentally rethink mobility by placing it in the context of energy and housing, and by stimulating innovative ideas and projects that accelerate just transitions for sustainability. With a diverse consortium, the project will explore the diversity of mobility challenges in three use cases in the Netherlands: a rural area in Friesland, an existing urban district in Amersfoort, and a new urban district in Helmond. Through a “Museum of the Past of the Future”, lessons from the project will be used to co-create new, just and sustainable visions of the future.

Involving residents in the local energy transition is crucial, as much needs to be done behind the front door and in the neighbourhood. Up until now, residents have often been sceptical, for example, about the costs. And even if they do participate, their desires and wishes often clash with implementation frameworks of municipalities, housing corporations and energy companies. With a cross-disciplinary consortium of colleges, universities and practical partners, we are investigating mechanisms to better connect participation and implementation.

Research question

Municipalities, housing corporations and energy companies have professionals who have a lot of contact with residents. How do they interact and act with their colleagues who mainly work internally and are responsible for the implementation of the heat transition?

• Funding: A RAAK-PRO subsidy

SMARTACULAR seeks to reimagine the future of built environments by merging insights from local vernacular architecture with academic expertise in sustainable development. The goal is to develop guidelines that combine cutting-edge sustainability practices with traditional building knowledge.

The objective is to reimagine the future of the built environment by intertwining insights from local vernacular building with academic insight on sustainable futures. The ambition is to provide guidelines for the built environments which blend cutting-edge sustainability practices with  local vernacular practices.

The key research question is: How can we design and built environments that align with the pressing global sustainability demands while remaining relevant to their local context? 


SMARTACULAR’s aims are to:

• Explore how to translate insights from vernacular architecture and traditional building into contemporary sustainable building practices
• Examine the challenges and opportunities when we start integrating these insights with current technological advancements

Methodology & impact

SMARTACULAR will adopt an interdisciplinary approach, combining theoretical research, grassroots participatory methods, and qualitative analysis. The project is structured around four key work packages, progressing from an understanding of global best practices to the practical application of a qualitative matrix tool.

A significant outcome of the project will be the creation of this matrix tool, an open-source resource designed to help developers create built environments that are both globally sustainable and locally relevant. The project aims to establish an inclusive dialogue platform, bringing together various disciplines and stakeholders and fostering meaningful and holistic change in built environment design.

Funding

• HORIZON-Marie Curie MSCA-2024-PF-01

Duration

• September 2025 to February 2028

European societies face an intertwined housing and energy crisis, exacerbating social disparities. Limited affordable housing, coupled with soaring energy costs, deepen energy poverty and housing inequalities.While renovating existing housing is proposed as a solution, concerns persist that it may worsen inequalities.

With this in mind, the EU-funded PREFIGURE (Prototypes for addressing the housing-energy-nexus) spotlights innovative policies, markets, and social initiatives addressing the housing-energy efficiency nexus. It aims to understand how innovations can disrupt housing disparities and energy poverty, identify effective housing policies, and mobilise knowledge for sustainable transitions.

Through transformative research methods, PREFIGURE seeks evidence-based solutions to guide the green transition, fostering equitable pathways for all.

Combining transformative qualitative and quantitative methods with technological and real-laboratory research PREFIGURE aims to:

• analyse how the unequal access to financial incentives for energy-efficient building technology renovations by different types of owners and tenants, contributes to furthering housing and income and wealth inequalities
• identify analyse and network active bottom up ‘household energy prototypes’, that go beyond market-based practices and address the housing/energy poverty nexus
• mobilise the knowledge from the prototypes to up-scale  innovative practices and co-create evidence-based alternative policy solutions that can undercut the existing norms for green transitions through marketized incentives.

Funding

• EU Horizon

Duration

• EU 2024-2027

Urban metabolisms are organized by regulations. These regulations establish who is allowed to use, reuse, process, collect, and dispose of materials in the city, and how.

These regulations are political because they organize how profits and costs are distributed. They are key to explaining why urban growth is still a linear process that exploits nature and labor in areas far from cities.

The project focuses on three material streams: construction, food, and heat. These are the largest such streams circulating in cities today, both as raw materials and as waste. They are also the most essential resources for the survival of urban inhabitants. They are necessary for housing, eating, and heating homes. Currently, only a small fraction of these materials are reused.

We study how regulations are contested, defended, and negotiated by practices that downscale the urban metabolism. We look at movements, collectives, public, private, and civic actors that wish to devise more circular and just ways of using urban materials and the built environment.

The EU’s Cities Mission has selected 100 cities – including Amsterdam – as innovation hubs to showcase ways for reaching the EU’s Green Deal goals and becoming climate neutral by 2030.

However, conflicting interests among different actors impede coherent sustainability pathways. We observe a dual risk of cities remaining locked into the status quo and being overwhelmed by the impacts of global change, while also creating tradeoffs between the various urban functions by intervening in specific areas while neglecting others.

This is particularly seen in port areas, where industrial, logistic, touristic, and housing functions collide in an ecologically rich and sensitive urban region. The research project Ways of Water – Overcoming conflicting sustainability pathways in the Port of Amsterdam (WoWPoA) focuses on the geographic region of the Port of Amsterdam (PoA).

Funding

• University of  Amsterdam Sustainable Prosperity focal area: Cities Central Role in Staying within the Planetary Boundaries

Duration

• 2025-2027

The Crafting Resilience academic research project is centred on the partnership between government, civil society organisations, and citizens to tackle social inequalities and foster social resilience, primarily within marginalised communities. The project emphasises the significance of such collaboration in response to urgent social issues. However, forging connections between the state and marginalised citizens presents a significant challenge, particularly in light of mounting inequality, polarisation, and institutional racism.

• Funding: NWO

This project aims to understand why mobility planning is gender-insensitive and how this can be changed. Given that this insensitivity is upheld by dominant forms of knowledge production and use in mobility planning, transforming mobility systems requires:

• rethinking their underlying epistemic regime
• situated understanding of forms of epistemic resistance
• generating alternative forms of knowledge production through research and knowledge dissemination

JUST PREPARE is a consortium of research institutions, municipalities, companies and social organisations that develop methodological and substantive knowledge in four municipalities — Amsterdam Zuidoost, Rotterdam, Nijmegen and Gemert — on the social, societal and technical aspects of the energy transition. This specifically focuses on a fair and effective energy transition in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In this way, JUST PREPARE investigates how a transition, which is urgently needed, can also become and be fair.

BOLSTER – Bridging Organizations and marginalized communities for Local Sustainability Transitions in EuRope.

No European citizen should be put at a disadvantage because of the European Green Deal (EGD). Research shows that transition policies predominantly benefit already privileged citizens and often tend to reproduce social inequalities. Moreover, there is a growing polarization vis-à-vis transition plans.

The BOLSTER project will deliver new scientific evidence on decarbonization transition strategies and how they intersect with various dimensions of inequality, such as gender, race, age and class. It will conceptualize the principle of leaving no one behind by developing participatory governance models and transition guidelines based on climate justice and gender equality.

Funding

• European Union

Duration

• 2022-2025

Urban Blue Justice is a UvA-funded research project that examines how climate justice materializes in cities, particularly in relation to urban blue spaces.

Water, its excess (floods) and absence (droughts), shapes and reshapes urban experience, sometimes in unexpected terms. Such transformations are particularly tangible in urban blue spaces – here defined as urban areas adjacent to surface water bodies (salt, fresh and brackish) – where risks, vulnerabilities, and value entwine to produce a complex landscape of urban living, planning, development, and governance.

The project aims to locate climate justice, conceptually and empirically, in the ordinary adaptation practices of professionals and citizens working and living at the margins of urban waters in the Global North and South. The project will compare cases from cities in the Global North (e.g. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Lisbon) with cities in the Global South (Mumbai, Accra, Porto Alegre). The project is a joint endeavour of researchers in the Urban Planning research group and the Governance and Inclusive Development research group.

Funding

• University of Amsterdam

The JUST STREETS project focuses on (re)developing streets shaped by active mobility that are both sustainable and inclusive for all citizens.

The 32 international partners collaborate to empower 12 cities in transforming existing streets into just, equal, and human-centered spaces for active mobility.

Funding

• European Union’s Horizon Europe programme

DURATION

• 2024-2027

The project aims at examining the challenges and opportunities that urban circular grassroots innovations encounter to create, maintain, and scale their solutions for sustainable and inclusive transitions from below. Researchers from six universities in the cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Nantes and Gothenburg participates together with grassroots organizations and initiatives from the cities. See consortium information below. The Amsterdam team focuses on circularity practices in the context of housing cooperatives.

Project partners

• University of Gothenburg
• University of Nantes
• University of Barcelona
• Chalmers University

Towards a sustainable integration of disciplines in urban studies. Building on in-depth interdisciplinary research on the relationship between urban theory and urban history (see the USI FWO-WOG ‘Urban Agency II: The Historical Fabrication of the City as an Object of Study’) the project Urban Agency III will examine the relationship between the institutional embedding of urban studies and the orientation, nature and performativity of the research involved. The program will:

• chart the differences between urban studies institutes and analyze the origins thereof
• examine the consequences of the institutional factors
• identify good practices and develop scientific propositions and recommendations for policy makers

GRowing Effective & Equitable Nature-based Solutions through INClusive Climate Actions (GREEN-INC) is a European research project with six universities in five partner cities.

We will research how Inclusive Climate Actions can lead to more effective and equitable Nature-based Solutions for both communities and ecosystems. GREEN-INC aims to help European cities to implement Inclusive Climate Actions that result in a more just delivery and design of Nature-based Solutions by incorporating fairness and distributing NbS impacts as equitably as possible.

The DUT Partnership steps up the game to tackle urban challenges. Through research and innovation and capacity building, we enable local authorities and municipalities, service and infrastructure providers, and citizens to translate global strategies into local action. We develop the skills and tools to make urban change happen and boost the urgently needed urban transformations towards a sustainable future with enhanced quality of life in cities.