Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) proposes integrating the management of urban water cycles into urban planning and design as a strategy to better respond to water challenges in the urban environment. Proposed frameworks try capturing urban water sensitivity in terms of generic, transferable principles. In this article, we trace the water history of Kozhikode in India to make a plea for epistemic justice and context-specificity in the definition of water sensitivity, recognizing how the quality and direction of contemporary urban water flows are the outcome of particular – (post-)colonial, neo-liberal – histories. We mobilize insights from political ecology to do this. Concepts like waterscapes and hydro-social imaginaries help acknowledge that waters and cities co-evolve to create often highly uneven waterscapes. This usefully denaturalizes and thereby politicizes urban water sensitivity, giving much-needed prominence to the ‘who’ questions: who will benefit (most), and who will stand to lose? For Kozhikode, with its fishing enclaves, sacred groves, ponds, and a colonial canal crossing its coastal plain, treating water sensitivity as a mere techno-managerial question risks reinforcing middle-class dominance and aspirations, while also provoking ecological decay.@en

Competence for planning usually rests with more than one level of government in a country which creates multi-scalar or multi-level governance for spatial planning. The majority of the 32 countries in the ESPON COMPASS study had three levels of government, though some have two or four. The distribution of competences differs and there is much change which often involves the abolition or creation of administrations. There are several trends underway: decentralisation or devolution of competences, for example, in Germany and Croatia; regionalisation where there is devolution to sub-national governments, for example, in the UK and in some ways Greece; and concurrent centralisation and decentralisation, for example, in Denmark and Lithuania. Most countries have some competence for national-level responsibilities for planning, even in federal states where the competent bodies are at sub-national level there is cooperation on some issues for the whole country. Spatial planning across functional regions or soft territorial cooperation areas is increasing, most commonly in metropolitan regions, where there are varied arrangements including the creation of metropolitan-level administrations, inter-municipal agreements and voluntary cooperation.@en

Introduction
Urban mobility can detrimentally impact city dwellers' health and quality of life, e.g. through air pollution, noise and traffic injuries, but offers opportunities for health promotion, e.g., through active travel. While the health impacts of transport are well known, the extent to which health is considered in mobility plans is less obvious. The European Commission encourages cities to develop Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) to improve residents’ quality of life. We assess how health is addressed in SUMPs by examining: i) key health and health equity terminology, ii) explicit transport pathways to health, iii) health targets and key performance indicators, and iv) the health-rationale of actions and measures.

Methods
Using a customised health dictionary, we perform a quantitative text analysis of SUMPs issued from 2006 to 2023 (n = 230) from 31 European countries listed on the European Local Transport Information Service (Eltis) City Database. We further validate this by an in-depth qualitative analysis of a purposive sub-sample (n = 13).

Results
The findings show that while the prominence of health in SUMPs seems to be increasing, the link between transport and equity, and social and mental wellbeing is not frequently discussed. Detailed targets and KPIs for several health pathways are scarce or missing, as are the health rationale and health outcomes for proposed measures. Overwhelmingly SUMPs’ health aspirations focus on minimising detrimental health impacts of transport, primarily from traffic injuries and to a lesser extent from air pollution. Health related concepts such as accessibility and active travel feature prominently but are not explicitly identified as an opportunity to enhance health.

Conclusion
Urban mobility planning across Europe seems to miss an opportunity to embrace mobility as a driver of health promotion.@en

Ecological Urbanism and Water Sensitive Urban Design have a central contribution to make in protecting and caring for people, nature and water in cities but readings of Urban Political Ecology evidence how ecological metaphors in urban design can easily translate into discriminatory urban development processes. This paper posits that for UPE to become meaningful for urban design practice, it is necessary to move beyond a critique. Instead, the insights of UPE should be pro-actively mobilized to develop a new vision of water sensitivity. The paper therefore identifies ways in which the key learnings of the critical social sciences, namely UPE, can be mobilized to support Water Sensitive Urban Design practice. How can ecological urbanists imagine new, more politically astute, forms of water sensitive living, charting design processes that not just recognize but also actively question and challenge uneven socio-ecological dynamics? In answering this question, the goal of this article is to make use of critique from UPE to influence Ecological Urbanists' goals and activate their political alignment with agendas that prioritize social equity. In imagining a new form of WSUD, we tried as much as possible not to over-instrumentalize UPE by rejecting the suggestion that some UPE ‘lessons’ or ‘insights’ could simply be inserted into ecological urbanism. On a different direction, we argue for a different emphasis in WSUD that does not deny the causes of current environmental degradation, pollution and depletion but, on the contrary, actively takes issue with and challenges the extractive and exploitative roots of contemporary urbanization processes.

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Many references to policy paradigms and paradigm shifts can be found in the transport studies literature. Within this literature, diverse ways of interpreting and measuring paradigms and paradigm shifts are evident. This article critically reviews how paradigms are conceived in the transport studies literature and compares these interpretations with the policy science literature where the term has been more widely studied and used. The article proposes a conceptualisation of transport policy paradigms along four key dimensions: problem framing, goals, instruments and evaluation criteria. This conceptualisation helps to increase the clarity and usefulness of the term paradigm for both researchers and practitioners in studying transformative changes in transport policy.@en

Three critical facets of spatial planning are central to defining its character and performance in shaping spatial development: policy integration, the adaptability of plans, and engagement of citizens. This chapter reports on what was learned about general trends in Europe since 2000 for each of these facets drawing on two projects under the name ESPON COMPASS. We briefly introduce integration, adaptability and engagement, and what is known about trends with reference to key sources and examples. The findings complement evidence presented in other parts of this book, especially Chapters 6 and 9. This chapter stands back from much of the detail elsewhere in the book and give a broad and generic assessment based on expert evaluations. The picture is one of substantial reform of planning systems which seek to strengthen integration, enable adaptation of plans to address uncertainty, and engage citizens more deeply in the process.@en

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) can potentially bring about major changes in cities. Anticipatory planning approaches may provide valuable opportunities for fostering desirable transitions and pre-empting undesirable impacts. This research employs a combination of two methods to define the key policies to support a transition to the desirable driverless urban futures: the backcasting approach and the participatory Q-method. The combination of these techniques aims to identify different viewpoints about policies with the purpose of determining more effective and more acceptable options. The article analyses viewpoints from 20 citizens and 10 experts. The results point to the existence of two main viewpoints about the most and least desirable policies. The first viewpoint centres around increasing pedestrian mobility and promoting a more compact city. The second viewpoint centres around expanding transit-oriented development (TOD) and new networks of green spaces. Meanwhile, support for regulation-oriented policies to discourage the use of private motorised vehicles was relatively low. This research not only sheds light on the different viewpoints on the policies to achieve more desirable urban visions, it also illustrates the tensions and disagreements that may arise in the process of policy-making.

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This article introduces the 30th anniversary special issue of European Planning Studies. After briefly taking a retrospective look at some of the developments in planning research and practice over the last 30 years the article introduces a set of future-oriented perspectives which were commissioned specifically for this special issue. Each of the contributions contained in this special issue presents a unique perspective on the future prospects and directions for planning theory and practice in Europe. Taken together, these contributions contain a wealth of ideas which deserve further attention and reflection among planning scholars and practitioners.

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There is extensive literature on the agency of actors in urban and regional planning which draws on a wide range of theoretical lenses and concepts. One of the recurring themes is the relationship between agency and structure—the mutual interdependence between individual actions and collective institutions, rules, and norms. This article provides a narrative overview of the wide range of literature on agency and structure in relation to spatial planning clustered around six interrelated themes: institutions, discretion, pragmatism, networks, leadership, and emotions. It identifies new avenues for research, paying particular attention to empirical, scalar, and methodological issues.

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Xiong’an New Area is not only a newly emerging and nationally endorsed technopole, it is also regarded as a test-bed for novel forms of governance and financial management in China. Although it is currently only in its starting phase, Xiong’an demonstrates that various institutional features are very different from those found in traditional technopoles, such as National High-tech Industrial Development Zones (NHTIDZs). How such institutional innovation affects feasibility and viability of the construction and maintenance of new high-tech metropolises is under-studied. This article develops a conceptual framework based on the theory of space production and identifies two types of space production, global industrialization and local urbanization, which are then applied to the NHTIDZs. Analysis of the situation in Xiong’an leads to the conclusion that Xiong’an represents a mode of strong state-led space production within China’s governance modernization. This not only opens the door to a reconsideration of current land finance and social management systems but it also implies that the transferability of its institutional innovations is limited to other cities where imposing greater social control through technologies is possible.

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The Netherlands has initiated a process of ‘policy boosterism’ that attempts to make Dutch urban water culture and its associated imaginary of water sensitivity fit for global export. This strategic shift depends on the collaboration of a mosaic of actors, private and non-private to promote knowledge sharing between countries. As this new dynamic emerges, urban design becomes strategic to create future visions for cities towards more sustainable relationships with water. One such vision stems from Water Sensitive Urban Design, an approach that borrows from ecological urbanism with the objective to restore water ecologies in cities. This article looks at how urban design knowledge from the Netherlands provides concepts to describe, evaluate and promote urban water as an enabler of sustainability globally. It also investigates how networks of actors from the Netherlands interact to make imaginations about Water Sensitive Cities globally mobile. This entails the packaging of a mobile water culture that, ultimately, can re-shape power relations. Considering that cities rely on privileged accesses to global networks to disseminate ideas, port cities are potential sites for ‘policy boosterism’. The port city of Rotterdam, for instance, is the model city in the concerted effort to promote Dutch urban water expertise (Goh, 2020) and, in the context of Indo-Dutch partnerships, a port city was chosen for an urban design initiative: Water as Leverage in Chennai. The project acts as mechanisms through which imaginations of urban water is packaged from the Netherlands for global export. Interestingly, the principal way in which this translation happens is through the creation of an imaginary/vision/framework of water sensitivity that is appealing and meets broad societal goals. In this context, design becomes a powerful tool through which these broad visions are made ‘fit for purpose’ and influence – or not – local ideas of urban landscapes.@en

Researchers and policymakers have long called for a collaborative governance process for climate adaptation and flood resilience. However, this is usually challenging when urban planning is supposed to be integrated with water management. Using the Chinese city of Guangzhou as a case study, this study explores the long-term disadvantaged conditions of urban planning in flood governance and how this situation is shaped. The findings show that, in comparison to the increasingly dominant position of water management in flood affairs, the urban planning system has had weak powers, limited legitimate opportunities, and insufficient fiscal incentives from the 2000s to the late 2010s. Those conditions have been shaped by organizational structures, institutional rules, and financial allocation in urban governance, whose changes did not bring benefits to urban planning. The emergence of the Sponge City Program in China in 2017 and its implementation at the municipal level is deemed to be a new start for urban planning, considering the encouragement of nature-based solutions and regulatory tools in land use for flood resilience. Even so, the future of this program is still full of challenges and more efforts are needed.@en

Despite the expected future introduction of autonomous vehicles in cities, very few studies have analysed the needs and challenges facing urban planning. This paper employs a combination of backcasting and Q-methodology to carry out participatory visioning for a future driverless city. This novel approach was used to elaborate shared visions of the desirable city among a group of 20 citizens and 10 practitioners. Views on 41 statements were analysed relating to urban design, society, environment, transport and mobility needs. Three main visions were identified. The first focuses on high-quality urban spaces and active mobility. The second vision is more futuristic and pro-social, consistent with the more imaginative and innovative stance of young people. The third vision is more conventional and closer to business-as-usual. The results suggest that there is some agreement on the future conditions and policies, especially on the need for environmentally friendly urban development and safe urban design. The article is premised on the belief that engaging stakeholders from different backgrounds, including citizens of various ages, can be enriching for urban planning since there is a wide variety of heterogeneous preferences across society. This requires a search for common ground when designing policy measures that satisfy multiple interests.

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This chapter outlines a conceptual model for understanding the range of policy tools which can be used in spatial planning. The classification of tools builds on the NATO model (nodality, authority, treasure, and organisation) proposed by Christopher Hood (1986) and differentiates between two separate functions of policy tools: substantive and procedural. Substantive policy tools refer to those which directly affect the delivery of the goals of a plan, while procedural policy tools refer to those which affect the process and procedure of developing or reviewing a plan. A further distinction is made between tools used for the activities of plan-making (and review), development control and plan enforcement, since these activities make use of different types of tools.

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The Department of Urbanism of the TU Delft is organised in six sections: Spatial Planning & Strategy (SPS), Urban Design, Environmental Technology & Design, Urban Studies, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Data Science. 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. [...]@en

Sustainable urban transformation has become a mantra for Chinese cities. While most studies focus on sustainable urbanization in megacities, the far larger number of medium-sized cities is understudied, although the latter face more severe urban problems. This article develops a framework for examining policy change in sustainable urban development initiated at the central level and reactions, tensions, and implementation issues emerging at the local level. It focuses on an in-depth case study of the challenges in realizing a transition from quantity-oriented pro-growth policies to sustainable quality-oriented ones in a medium-sized Chinese city. We find that there is evidence of changes in long-term values and goals toward sustainability at the levels of both central and local government, but also great inconsistency between goals on paper and policy implementation in practice. Sustainability in urban development is much harder to realize as local officials see urban development as a major means to maintain local economic growth, which can be separated from other issues in ecological preservation. The article concludes with a roadmap for future studies focusing on medium-sized cities, especially indicating how narratives on sustainable urban development hide from view financial and environmental risks generated by the actual implementation of the dominant aggressive urban pro-growth model.

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This article analyses the urban conditions of Chennai, India, and takes a critical look at its planning framework by considering four main aspects: the ecological structures, urban morphology, mobility, and livability. To do so, the article examines policy documents, urban form, public perceptions, and daily mobility patterns. Specific attention is focused on three layers of the urban fabric: water and ecology, transport infrastructure, and housing. First, the city’s river restoration is critically assessed, with a focus on integrating the social dimension into the process. Second, the metro network is analyzed, specifically understanding its usage with respect to different user groups. Third, the densification pattern in different parts of the city is analyzed. Considering the layers of water, transport infrastructure, and housing together, the article sets out an alternative integrated approach to strategic design and planning in the city towards the goal of creating a more livable public realm. The proposed integrated framework, termed “supergrids” is a city-scale strategy that enables a large reconfiguration of the existing networks in the city, integration of ecological systems into the public space network, and a restructuring of movement patterns by upscaling the vehicular network, and aligning pedestrian connections with green networks, public transit, and important functions. @en

Parking is often overlooked by urban researchers even though parking consumes large proportions of a city’s physical footprint and imposes a significant impediment to more sustainable travel. Underpinning this lack of attention is suitable data and methods capable of capturing the complex dynamics of parking. Here we redress this gap by drawing on an emergent source of parking data and deploying empirical techniques to unpack this complexity. Data from 3542 on-street parking sensors observed over a 9-year period are used to delineate the first typology of parking routines before using a fixed-effects logistic regression model to explain how nearby land-use types and land-use mix shapes tempo and timing of parking utilisation. The benefit of our approach lies in its capacity to discriminate broad types of temporal rhythms associated with parking dynamics at particular places, how these change over time and how these rhythms are associated with different types and mixes of nearby land use. This knowledge is important to inform policies seeking to optimise the use of on-street parking and invoke more sustainable patterns of mobility.

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This chapter outlines a conceptual model for understanding the range of policy tools which can be used in spatial planning. The classification of tools builds on the NATO model (nodality, authority, treasure, and organisation) proposed by Christopher Hood (1986) and differentiates between two separate functions of policy tools: substantive and procedural. Substantive policy tools refer to those which directly affect the delivery of the goals of a plan, while procedural policy tools refer to those which affect the process and procedure of developing or reviewing a plan. A further distinction is made between tools used for the activities of plan-making (and review), development control and plan enforcement, since these activities make use of different types of tools.

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