The Metropolitan Region Rotterdam-The Hague (MRDH) is a new geographic region and governance entity established in 2015. The OECD's report notes that, like many metropolitan regions, MRDH's discourse on spatial planning issues is limited by rivalry among guidelines from the traditional province-municipality administrative structure. Such a dilemma can lead to uncoordinated urban development trajectory and landscape fragmentation in the future metropolization process.

This project aims to develop a landscape-based metropolitan park structure (MPS) design framework to safeguard the essential landscape values for achieving sustainable urban transformation in MRDH. Based on the understanding and diagnosis of the MRDH complex urban system, the project carries out a targeted MPS design framework, which includes principles for MRDH's long-term visions and correspondent strategies for short-term interventions. It also encompasses a robust MPS network planning map and list of strategic locations with one local scale design as an example to elaborate how the framework contributes to sustainable urban transformation in multiscale. The MPS approach, differing from traditional metropolitan models, balances ecological preservation with urban development, promoting harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. By extending green spaces and promoting slow transportation through cultural and historical routes, the MPS fosters sustainable urban transformation. Overcoming traditional governance limitations, the MPS demonstrates a holistic approach to metropolitan spatial development, balancing socio-economic and ecological goals through ecosystem services.

In the past 20 years, urban development in the Netherlands has witnessed an increasing scale and accessibility of the retail market, accompanied by a shift in shopping habits due to the rise of the virtual economy. This shift has contributed to the decline of many traditional retail sectors. Local governments often opt to revitalize the market by increasing investment in renovations to cater to the needs of an urbanized population with higher income and diverse tastes (Lees, Slater, et al., 2010). This retail gentrification enhances the value of neighborhoods but also constrains the living space of vulnerable groups in the city.

This project uses The Hague’s main market area, situated in a working-class immigrant community, as a case study to investigate how the reshaping of market spaces in culturally diverse, underprivileged immigrant neighborhoods can foster social inclusion and improve residents’ welfare. Government policy in The Hague is more oriented towards economic development, and over the past decade, the main market, being one of the largest retail markets in the Netherlands and Europe, has undergone transformations and renovations to attract more visitors. However, the market did not achieve the anticipated development. On one hand, the rising costs and prices excluded many low-income and less-educated minority groups, squeezing out the public spaces they once enjoyed, creating a crisis of social displacement. On the other hand, the lack of uniqueness in the products offered at The Hague market failed to attract a substantial number of visitors, leading to wasted and segregated spaces. This situation underscores the increasing challenge of social isolation under retail gentrification.

Undoubtedly, economic development is also an essential goal for the region. To date, the local government’s planning for The Hague market still aims to turn it into a city attraction, prioritizing economic development and attracting more tourists, without adequately considering the local cultural background and demographic composition. There’s also a lack of clear guidelines on how spatial interventions can achieve these goals, especially in the post-pandemic era, when dissatisfaction among the public is growing on various media platforms. Studies indicate that the gentrification of the retail sector can reduce cultural diversity, thereby impacting community inclusion.

However, this project aims to start with a problem statement and a vision for improving the public space around The Hague market and its vicinity. It involves sociological and spatial research from an urban to a neighborhood scale, seeking an urban design strategy that prioritizes the spatial interests and sense of belonging of marginalized groups, rather than systemic gentrification. The project culminates in presenting a demonstrative design plan focused on The Hague market and its surrounding areas, considering whether this design strategy can be applied to other similar regions.

In summary, this project explores how the creation of public spaces can enhance social inclusion in multi-ethnic communities during market transformations, a factor often overlooked by governments in promoting gentrification. The research focuses on the potential symbiotic relationship between market transformation and these social objectives, aiming to provide a unique urban design perspective that can help balance social and economic goals.

Urban viaducts are essential components of main road networks in large cities. Balancing the enhancement of urban traffic efficiency with the preservation of urban space vitality is a significant challenge for many major cities in China. The Renmin Road Viaduct in Guangzhou exemplifies the conflict between unsustainable traffic development and daily life, serving as the primary focus of this study.

This project aims to achieve the macro goals of community livability and sustainable transportation through the integrated transformation of the Renmin Road Viaduct. The objective is to convert the viaduct from a negative urban space into one that positively impacts the city, thereby improving the living conditions of surrounding residents and alleviating messy traffic situations.

The project employs a combination of literature review, GIS traffic data processing and analysis, and surveys. By focusing on cultural, economic, social, and ecological dimensions, the design goals of "neighborhood livability" and "sustainable mobility" can be achieved through the transformation of integrated infrastructure. Transforming the Renmin Road Viaduct into a pedestrian-priority bridge offers innovative ideas and references for the renovation of similar urban viaducts in China.

Overpollution with plastic waste is becoming a leading concern globally, but even more so at island destinations popular among tourists. Tourists generate 3 times more waste than local residents, overuse local resources, and often lead to a change of the identity of the location (the so-called “disneyfication”). This project combines the topics of using recycled plastic elements in architecture, conceptualising more sustainable tourism patterns, and empowering local communities to become active participants in the fate of their land. The island of Bali, Indonesia, is used as a case study, as due to its international popularity, the symptoms of overtourism are apparent and already under discussion.

The object of the project is a community centre for an existing community on the island, which is growing in popularity among locals and aims to attract more foreign visitors- both as a source of income, and as a way to learn about the world first-hand. The design is developed in a way that caters both to the needs of the local community and the likings of temporary visitors, and facilitates meaningful interaction between them. The technical part of the research is focused on determining the availability of the plastic materials in the island’s waste, assessing its potential based on existing recycling technology and relating it to the architectural demands of the island.

The structural concept involves a combination of bamboo with vernacular connections and innovative plastic elements, all suited for community participation during the design process. The goal of it is to be easy to construct and be transferrable and adaptable to various programmes and locations with similar needs and characteristics- from Southeast Asia to the Caribbean islands.

A new product is developed and prototyped as part of the project: a plastic roof tile, which can serve a number of functions depending on its assembly, and which uses the inherent qualities and durability of the plastic material as shaping factors for its design.

The advent of the internet and digital technology has transformed public spaces, impacting human interactions and diluting their original purpose. However, augmented reality (AR) technology, exemplified by Pokémon Go, presents a unique opportunity to revitalize urban public spaces in the digital era. AR technology offers virtual flexibility, empowering public spaces to become multifunctional environments and redistributing the value of urban areas.
To accommodate this transformative potential, inclusive and enduring architectural structures are needed as resilient containers for AR development. This project focuses on designing robust, inclusive public buildings that seamlessly integrate into the urban fabric undergoing AR development. These structures adapt to the evolving needs and activities facilitated by AR, fostering social interaction and a sense of belonging within the community.
The integration of AR technology necessitates a holistic approach to urban design, extending beyond individual buildings to the broader urban context. By leveraging the transformative power of AR, this project envisions digitally enhanced and physically resilient urban environments that accommodate diverse activities and cultivate community. It explores new paradigms for urban design where public buildings serve as adaptable containers for AR experiences, fostering social cohesion and redefining the relationship between people, architecture, and the environment.
Through the integration of AR technology and thoughtful architectural design, this project showcases the potential for vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable urban public spaces in the digital age. By embracing flexibility, durability, and inclusivity, it establishes a foundation for AR-neutral buildings that respond to the evolving needs and aspirations of urban communities, creating a more engaging and harmonious urban environment.

Na een lange tijd waarin woningcorporaties door overheidsbeleid zijn beperkt in hun taken met betrekking tot sociale woningbouw, lijkt het belang van de woningcorporaties in het oplossen van het tekort aan middenhuur meer erkend te worden. Dit is te zien aan de recente afschaffing van de verhuurderheffing en de Nationale Prestatieafspraken met daarin inbegrepen de taak voor woningcorporaties om tot 2030 50.000 nieuwe woningen voor middenhuur te bouwen. Maar er is een overwegend tekort aan kennis over hoe woningcorporaties door middel van financiële incentives gestimuleerd kunnen worden voor het realiseren van middenhuur. Daarom wordt met dit onderzoek getracht om de kennis te vergroten over potentiele financiële incentives die woningcorporaties kunnen stimuleren voor het realiseren van middenhuur en de aspecten van de context die daarbij van belang zijn. Dit onderzoek is opgedeeld in twee fases, waarbij in de eerste fase drie potentiele incentives worden geformuleerd die vervolgens worden getest en geëvalueerd in de tweede fase. Het CMO-raamwerk staat centraal in dit proces. Eerst wordt op een bondige manier literatuur over het CMO-raamwerk en de bestaande kennis en onderzoek over middenhuur in Nederlandse context behandeld. Hieruit volgt de formulering van drie potentiele incentives en volgen verwachtingen over de bevindingen uit de interviews. Vervolgens worden de drie incentives voorgelegd door middel van semigestructureerde interviews met vijf woningcorporaties. Dit onderzoek heeft geresulteerd in CMO-overzichten van elk van de drie incentives, en die representeren wat de toegeschreven effecten van de incentives zijn, welke aspecten van context van belang zijn bij de werking van de incentives en welke potentiele consequenties kunnen voortkomen uit de implementatie van de incentives. De evaluatie van de bevindingen aan de hand van de bestaande kennis en onderzoek heeft geleid tot een beeld over in welke mate de bevindingen overeenkomen met de verwachtingen. Ook heeft het geleid tot een aantal aanbevelingen voor vervolgonderzoek. Uiteindelijk zijn er nieuwe inzichten over de incentives ontwikkeld waarbij er uitspraken worden gedaan over soort context waarin de geformuleerde incentives de corporaties beter zouden stimuleren en zullen significante elementen van een potentiele incentive worden gesuggereerd waar rekening mee gehouden kan worden bij het stimuleren van woningcorporaties.

This project is to improve the accessibility of military heritage sites in Soesterberg. Because of the different war times this heritage belongs, the scale and form of the heritage differ in spatial distribution. Also, due to the expansion of urban infrastructures, the road approaching the heritage sites are gradually occupied by new roads.
In this thesis, a new regional vision that connects and diversifies the routing when approaching the heritage sites is developed. By extracting historical elements from the war, a new system of materials, forms and installations is generated. On the local scale, feelings are interpreted into spatial expressions using the materials extracted from history. Besides the historic heritage study, the diversification of forests is also vital in this thesis. The forest thinning approach to diversify the forest species in the coming 10 years could hopefully turn this area into a more defensive and biodiversified area.

Vechtzoom-Zuid in post war neighbourhood Overvecht experiences multiple problems, the modernistic layout does not fit our society, the social cohesion is low and the inhabitants have a lot of social-economical problems. Shopping centre 'De Klop' is located in the centre of this neighbourhood, and experiencing a lot of problems as vacancy, nuisance and neglect. Due to its important location within the neighbourhood, spatially and socially, all the problems of the neighbourhood come together in the centre and, vice versa, the centre has a major impact on these problems. Therefore this research answers the following research question: 'How can modernistic shopping centre de Klop in post-war expansion neighbourhood Overvecht be transformed into an attractive centre that increases the social cohesion of Vechtzoom Zuid, while coping with transitions affecting shopping centres over the next 30 years?'

The research consists of multiple parts. The first part shows how the design of a centre can increase social cohesion in a neighbourhood. This can be done in three ways: Firstly, by making the centre overall more attractive and thereby increasing the use of public facilities. Secondly, by introducing new green spaces, where people can recreate and meet each other. And thirdly, by adding new housing in order to make housing career within the neighbourhood.

The second part shows the original ideas behind the neighbourhood, what changed in current society and what is the core problem within the design. The neighbourhood was built based on the ideas of CIAM, and the ‘Wijkgedachte’, but the changing composition of the population and social idea of top down collective social community caused problems. The collective spaces aren’t used as they are supposed to be, making the area unlively. The barriers caused by the car, and the repetition of buildings make the shopping centre unrecognisable resulting in even less liveliness. Therefore with the transformation of the centre the aim should be to make new, recognisable and accessible collective spaces, that are not yet to be found in the neighbourhood.

Lastly it is researched how a shopping centre should be designed in order to be adaptable to societal changes in the future. The centre should be densified, new slow routing has to be implemented and the transformation should consist out of different vast materialised spaces, functioning as a condition for multiple ways of shopping and commerce where the extremes are fun shopping and run shopping.

The answers of these three parts lead to the objectives and a design goal for the transformation of de Klop: Create new flexible and accessible collective spaces as a condition for a safe and recognisable heart of the neighbourhood where current and future residents can find a motive to visit and meet each other. Resulting in a transformation proposal that creates new flexible central spaces along a slow traffic line, breaking through the zoning of the Modernistic layout.

This thesis project, as part of the urban forest places graduation lab, focuses on the relationship between urban environments and the healing aspects of nature. Urban environments affect our body and state of mind, and are not always beneficial for our mental health. Landscape and urban design can do something about this. But the question is how? The city of Amsterdam is used as a location to investigate this. The city is surrounded with a diverse metropolitan landscape, which enters far into the city in the form of green wedges, also called the Scheggen. Amsterdam has a long history in investing in green spaces during urban expansions. Since the sixteenth century every period of growth has been accompanied by planned investment in green spaces. First by planting trees along the canals in the sixteenth century. Than by creating city parks in the nineteenth century. The existing green structure was planned during the General Expansion Plan in 1934, made by van Eesteren. The purpose of the General Expansion Plan was not only to expand urban development but also to create a balance between city and green space. This green structure ensures that every resident of Amsterdam can reach a green space within ten minutes, even from the heart of the city centre. Nowadays, the city of Amsterdam has to deal with the following problems. Firstly, the big pressure on the housing market, is forcing the city to densify as well as expand outside of its current urban borders, which makes the Scheggen vulnerable. Not only densification is a problem, but also the fact that more and more people suffer from mental health issues, such as stress, burn-outs, anxiety and depression. Of course we all need a little bit of stress, but if people cannot restore from too much stress for a prolonged period of time, their health will be negatively affected in many ways. Additionally, the city also has to deal with a number of other complex issues, such as climate change issues and biodiversity loss. This has led to the main research question: How can a forest park be designed in such a way that it contributes to reducing mental stress in an urban environment? The findings from the literature study provided evidence that a forest park can contribute to reduce mental stress. Visiting or viewing a forest has a positive effect on people’s mental health and recovering from stress, especially for people from urban environments. The literature study, together with a thorough site research, formed the site specific design principles for the design intervention. The result of this thesis is a design proposal for an urban forest park for Amsterdam Sloterdijk. The project shows that the design proposal for a forest park not only contributes to reduce mental stress in an urban environment, but also increases biodiversity, and acts as a climate buffer by managing rainwater and cooling the environment.

The city of Amsterdam is prospering, the amount of residents and visitors continues to grow every year. With this rapid population increase there are more people seeking to travel each day. This increases the pressure on all types of modalities in Amsterdam. As a result of this, the city becomes more busy, congestion increases, the air quality gets worse, noise caused by traffic increases and the public space diminishes. The current mobility systems have negative and positive effects on the livability in Amsterdam. The way people move through cities is changing rapidly. New technologies in mobility are making it possible for people to navigate through their city more safely and efficiently. Different modes of automated mobility will emerge in the next 30 years. (Papa & Ferreira, 2018) There are still many uncertainties related to their spatial impact on our cities. This graduation project attempts to identify how automated mobility can contribute to enhance livability in Amsterdam. It explores the spatial impact of automated mobility in Amsterdam. To understand this spatial impact the research projects first identifies the scenarios on how automated mobility will be implemented and subsequently researches how this new mobility system can contribute to enhance livability. The design project seeks to propose a model for the implementation of automated mobility in Amsterdam that contributes to enhancing livability.

Since the introduction of the car, our use of mobility is continuously growing (Kennisinstituut voor Mobiliteitsbeleid, 2018). Which leads to highly polluted areas, affecting urban health. Besides, the growing mobility results in a higher number of traffic accidents on the main road network (NU.nl, 2017). And not only growing mobility, but also the urban development of our cities will have an influence on urban health. Suburban development causes a population level reliance on car use every day. This imposed reliance causes low physical activity levels in a lot of residential neighbourhoods among many industrialized countries (Badland & Schofield, 2005). Physical inactivity, caused by dominance of the car in cities, the car dependency and infrastructural barriers in the city, can result in major health risks, especially in industrialized countries (Badland & Schofield, 2005). When engaging in physical activity, local streets and public spaces have been identified as the most suitable spaces (Badland & Schofield, 2005). 
The introduction of automated mobility will provide car users with new possibilities to do while traveling. As a consequence, people are willing to travel longer, and the frequency of trips might increase (Stead et al., 2018). Automated forms of traveling will be chosen over active forms of travelling, because of the ease and comfort of automated vehicles. All of this results in more and more cars on the streets and an increased traffic complexity. Summing up, the ever-growing mobility puts urban health at risk. On top of this, the introduction of automated mobility is posing a threat on various facets of urban health (personal lifestyles, accessibility, etc.), especially in residential neighbourhoods (because of the high car dependency). The following question is leading in this project: ‘‘How can the implementation of automated mobility contribute in improving urban health, in residential neighbourhoods in the city of Almere?’’.  Since this project is concerned with the topic automated mobility and the impact of it urban on health, the research type is a predictive one. Automated mobility is still in an early stage, it is uncertain what will happen in the future. Therefore, scenario planning will be at the heart of this project. For the progressive scenario a design is made for two neighbourhoods in Almere. Urban regeneration strategies are developed with a set of design elements and recommendations. Creating and retrofitting urban environments which will improve urban health. Promoting physical activity through urban design at the micro scale (neighbourhood scale) is one of the most effective measures to improve urban health. On top of this, strategies in reducing air pollution on the macro scale (city scale) will also be highly impactful in reducing diseases worsened by poor air quality. Besides, in the development of urban areas (on the district scale) a good accessibility to leisure facilities, healthy food, and public and green spaces can be integrated into the design to support health and well-being (Pineo & Rydin, 2018). Slow traffic should get the full priority, therefore fast automated vehicles are only allowed on a limited number of roads.

My research goal was to explore the possibilities of post industrial sites to transform them into green infrastructure by multi-scale approach, making them not only benefit the ecology system in city scale, but also urban environment in local scale, while remaining the industrial beauty of the site.

This master thesis is the final result of my graduation project, a year of researching the field of urban planning and design, facing the complexity of urban regeneration processes.
Because of the current complexity of this urban regeneration, it is important to research the current processes, to see if they work as efficient as possible. This research takes Rotterdam as a case study, a large innovative and developing city of the Netherlands. Both top-down and bottom-up perspectives are revised to improve the current plans and processes for the regeneration of Rotterdam. It is time for urban planners and designers to make a shift in the development of planning strategies in a way they create a more sustainable and durable way of urban development by using the existing qualities of each specific area. In this way our profession can contribute to the improvement of the living environment and conditions of citizens.
This thesis looks for an improvement of involving citizens into the planning processes of the municipality. By reviewing local citizen’s demands, and combining this with the structure of the municipality, a new urban regeneration plan is developed, taking all the different actors into account.