Currently the world is dealing with a pandemic. The world has stopped, and people are distancing from each other. However, this large crisis is not the only crisis the world is currently dealing with. Climate change is affecting the world drastically since the last century. Our current way of development must stop to deal with this change. This is the ideal time to stop and think about the future. How can we provide a future-proof city that is still attractive to our grandchildren?
Regardless of the crisis, more people want to live in cities, and therefore more features are needed within the same space. Cities must continuously adapt to new needs and demands. This fast-changing environment makes it even harder to continue our current development, while adapting to the needs and demands. A future-proof city starts with a sustainable development of new plans. It is time to improve the involvement of sustainability in area development. This study will look at this overdue change in area development. It acknowledges this problem and aims to advice how sustainability can be better embedded in spatial planning.
To support this optimization, the instruments of a municipality are researched in this master thesis. Next to the instruments, also, governance and the organizational aspects are included. This research has found that these three aspects of instruments, governance and organization combined should be optimized. An optimization of these three aspects can ensure that an area is developed sustainable.