Drylands, hyper arid to subhumid areas where rainfall is limited, are expected to expand due to climate change. Natural resources, such as water and food, are scarcer in these areas. Population growth and urbanization are putting even more pressure on communities living there, as well as on the urban fabric and ecosystems. How can nature based ecocities be created in these environments?

A pattern language, which is able to translate practical knowledge into substantiated spatial configurations that work in arid areas is missing in current theory and practice. The ´Urban Arid Green research by design project´ addresses a sustainable population growth and urbanization in arid regions via the case study in Tamansourt. Tamansourt is one of the 19 Moroccan new towns developed under the national Villes Nouvelles (New Towns) strategy. The city is still under construction, as the spatial analysis, site visit, and conducted interviews have revealed. The city has not reached its target population nor its desired level of urban activity yet. However, fundamental issues already manifest themselves.

The vision ‘Regreen to Rewild’ aims to counteract the pressures mentioned before, by developing a transformative framework towards an ecocity, taking the natural system as the basis (nature-driven urbanism). Tamansourt Ecocity gives purpose to the local community and a new identity to the city.

The transition described in this vision requires a systemic change, including environmental, policy and behavioral change. To support this shift, a common language amongst all future stakeholders has been created: the Urban Arid Green pattern language. This spatial language includes four pathways, of which each includes a group of development guidelines. One of the four pathways captures the original design guidelines for Moroccan new towns, as formulated by Al Omrane in 2010. The other guidelines focus on the biosphere, the urban fabric, and immaterial values.

The Urban Arid Green project shows how these generic patterns can be translated into a site-specific design which stakeholders can use in the city’s transition. This sets a precedent for other arid cities that aim to sustainably develop while under the pressure of scarce resources, climate change and population growth. Every landscape needs to adapt its own site-specific pathway based on the generic language, allowing unique dialects for different landscapes.@en

Future-proof engineering curricula can cope with fast-changing circumstances, and the opportunities and threats these bring along in the context of the curriculum. Curriculum Agility (CA) is a concept aimed at helping higher education institutions analyse how responsive their programmes are to changes in society, industry, and student characteristics and needs. The CA model describes features needed to adapt curricular and organizational structures, learning content and outcomes, learning activities and pedagogies, staff development, and examination design in a timely and proactive manner. Based on the model, a CA Self-Mapping Protocol has been developed that aims to actively engage and simultaneously enable curriculum stakeholders in the self-mapping process. It was tested at five European universities and at different levels, i.e. university, department, and program level. Leading questions focused on the effects of the CA self-mapping process; and what that could mean for the set-up of the protocol. The aim of this paper is to present to what extent, and in which form, the self-mapping protocol, as a design-thinking, guided dialogue with multiple stakeholders, is valuable and feasible in different higher engineering education institutional contexts. All facilitators were able to adjust the protocol to local contexts. And although there were all kinds of differences (of use and process) between the institutes, what ‘stands firmly’ is the importance of the negotiating understanding of what CA is and what it means to the local context. The presence of the ten principles were instrumental to ‘guarantee’ that people were discussing and considering the themes that needed to be addressed.@en

This article describes the TU Delft's 2020 experiences during the pandemic in teaching and learning urban design and planning for (post-)COVID-19 times. The article presents the view why, that and how the themes of spatial resilience
and governance resilience should be emphasized in urbanism curriculums. Additionally, it discusses the value of creating well-organized and empathetic online design studios as an inspiring learning environment for both student
and teacher.@en

This report is the result of a symposium organised by the department of Urbanism of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft on May 14 2018. with the objective to discuss ideas, methodologies and challenges of a planning and design education for water resilient cities.@en

Pagina's: 034-01 t/m 034-24@en