The transition towards nature-based cities has increasingly become a central focus in political–environmental agendas and urban design practices, aiming to enhance climate adaptation, urban biodiversity, spatial equilibrium, and social well-being as part of the ongoing socio-ecological urban transition process. Climate adaptation in cities is a complex problem and one of the main collective challenges for society, but the relationships between city managers and citizens as to urban green care still face many challenges. Parks design guided by technical-expert and globalised criteria; inflexibility from bureaucratic inertia; and citizens’ demands to participate in the urban green transition, sometimes without the necessary knowledge or time, are some of the challenges that require further research. In this study, we examine four long-lasting approaches to green-space management in four cities in the Netherlands, ranging from municipality-driven to community-driven management forms, and encompassing diverse spatial configurations of greenery within the urban fabric. Utilising the theoretical lens of the Social–Ecological Systems Framework, we employ a multiple-case-study approach and ethnographic fieldwork analysis to gain a comprehensive understanding of the norms, collective-choice rules, and social conventions embodied in each urban green management arrangement. The purpose of this research is applied, that is, to provide urban managers and decision-makers with a deeper understanding of drivers to promote effective collaborative management approaches, focusing on specific organisational rules that may contribute to more sustained planning and maintenance pathways for urban green spaces, regardless of changes in political leadership or significant external funding sources. The results of the investigated cases show that long-lasting collaborative management of forests and parks has established a set of collective-choice rules for resource transfer between municipalities and citizens, including non-monetary resources (such as pruning-training courses or guided tours that attract tourists and researchers). Additionally, these arrangements have been favoured by the existence of legal norms that enable co-ownership of the land, and monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms that offer a slightly different interpretation from the evidence identified so far in the scientific literature on collective resource management and organisational studies.@en

Una rápida compañera presenta, por primera vez en castellano, los escritos de Víctor Muñoz Sanz en torno a los nuevos espacios creados alrededor de las tecnologías de la automatización. Es un viaje que nos traslada a fábricas de calzado de finales del siglo XIX, a innovadores puertos logísticos e invernaderos en los que no encontramos rastro de trabajadores humanos y a terrenos fangosos donde vacas frisonas fruto de la selección genética conviven con robots de la más alta tecnología. Este ensayo, entre la observación más aguda y la especulación más sugestiva, no se deja cegar por el brillo de las tecnologías más recientes ni fascinar por productos espaciales nunca vistos. Su trabajo nos ayuda a entender los avances espaciales que día tras día transforman toda clase de entornos de trabajo tras los muros opacos del oscurantismo empresarial y, a la vez, la forma en que la tecnología, la ciencia y la arquitectura moldean, días tras día, cuerpos humanos y no humanos. “A Muñoz Sanz le preocupa la manera en que se expresa hoy ese flujo de capital. Por ello, analiza su concreción técnica y su dimensión digital, ampliando la cuestión más allá de lo humano, para entender qué papel juegan agentes tan diversos como los algoritmos, las plataformas, los animales, las toxinas o los virus, sean biológicos o informáticos. Así, ha conseguido trazar cierta dimensión espacial de nuestro presente, en especial la que más tiempo ocupa en nuestro día a día: la del trabajo.” - Landa Hernández Martínez, autora del prólogo Víctor Muñoz Sanz es arquitecto e investigador, y está afincado en los Países Bajos. Es profesor asistente de Diseño Urbano en la TU Delft, donde conceptualiza, lidera y desarrolla estudios críticos sobre la arquitectura y el urbanismo del pasado, presente y futuro del trabajo. Es coeditor de Automated Landscapes (Nieuwe Instituut, 2023), Roadside Picnics: Encounters with the Uncanny (drp Barcelona, 2022) y Habitat: Ecology Thinking in Architecture (NAI010, 2020). Víctor estudió Arquitectura en la ETSA de Madrid (2006), Diseño Urbano en la Graduate School of Design de la Universidad de Harvard (2011) y finalizó su doctorado en 2016 en la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.@en

The concentration of human populations in dense settlements, from small towns, to cities, to metropolitan and post-metropolitan formations and diffuse agglomeration zones, lies at the core of the urbanization process. But these high concentrations of people, economic activities, capital, structures, and infrastructures that characterize urban life are impossible to be sustained without a much more geographically extensive web of landscapes of primary production, circulation and waste disposal that form the other side of the urbanization process. In fact, cities due to their high densities, cover no more that 3% of the planetary terrain, while these “other” landscapes that support these high densities, activate more than 70% of the earth’s land surface. In the context of accelerated environmental crises and transition planning efforts, addressing these indirect consequences of urbanization (e.g. pollution, environmental degradation, or biodiversity loss) on more than city, more-than-human landscapes is conditioning the planning of future urban and infrastructural developments. This contribution aims to interrogate the condition of urban density in this broader perspective, illustrating how the densification of human populations in cities, constructs more-than-human densification patterns across more-than-city environments. Specifically, we situate our investigation in the Dutch context and its more-than-city environments. We explore how, in this respect, densification can be conceived as a broader characteristic of the urbanization process, not just the city. Industrial agricultural systems pack plants together in extreme densities, as do large scale Confined Animal Feeding Operations with livestock. We use this framework to examine the country’s long history of agricultural modernization, intensification, and crises, highlighting the convoluted interdependencies between more-than-city landscapes and dense cities. Through historical, conceptual and cartographic exploration, this contribution aims to help reveal the mirror image of urban densities, extending the scope of the conference’s theme of the dense city to include the dense more-than city in planning history.@en

Rahul Mehrotra is the founder and principal of RMA Architects, as well as Professor of Urban Design and Planning and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at Har-vard University School of Design. His practice can be described as multimodal and multi-scalar, emphasizing the hybridization of research, wri-ting, teaching, design, policy advocacy, and civic engagement. With several books and dozens of essays, he has built a reputation as, arguably, the leading commentator on issues to do with the built environment in Mumbai and India.@en

The excesses of this system are currently reflected in the state of decline of the Dutch landscape. Scaling up, intensification, as well as the accompanying increase in traffic, are resulting in the deterioration of the landscape. Whether we are talking about the nitrogen crisis, the protection of the Wadden Sea against oil drilling, floods in Limburg, or earthquakes in Groningen, political reality seems extremely flexible while the boundaries of our ecosystems are fixed. In the exhibition 'From Raster to Vector: The Netherlands as Profit Landscape', artists and other stakeholders are researching possibilities for a more balanced interpretation of the landscape, with proposals for more circular and sustainable relationships between economic and ecological interests. However, the participants are not considering the landscape to be an entity that is best left to its own devices. Landscaping is a verb, something that requires a continuous effort to ensure a better spatial quality, albeit beyond exclusively human-oriented interests, and as a unilateral answer to climate change. For this we need proper designers, imagination, and design talent.@en

This article explores the use of the pattern language approach in bridging the gap between formal and informal urban planning practices in the African context. This study focuses on a case application within the urbanised region encompassing the Nakivubo wetland located in Kampala, Uganda. As in other cities in Africa with a colonial past, Kampala’s planning system signals a profound gap between a technocratic, European paradigms-based type of planning and the everyday practices of citizens. This results in a “dual city,” with formal and informal communities using resources and spaces differently, leading to spatial segregation and non-implementation of urban plans. To overcome this challenge, the pattern language approach is utilised in this research to link formal and informal practices through facilitating meaningful community participation and integrating tacit knowledge into the planning process. To achieve this, the researchers conducted fieldwork and interacted with the local community in informal settlements to develop informal patterns, while analysing the history and current organisation of formal planning institutions in Kampala to formulate formal patterns. The patterns were used as input for a community workshop, which resulted in a pattern language of wetland management practices and a framework that begins to bridge both formal and informal domains of urban practice. By using the pattern language approach as a tool to understand informal practices and their possible incorporation into a planning process that captures the needs of citizens, this research offers relevant insights into achieving sustainable and inclusive urban environments.@en

The introduction of forests in cities has been an observable trend in recent years, with planned forest management projects proliferating around the world. The fact that many urban forests in the public space are traditionally managed by top-down bureaucratic procedures and guided by expert knowledge raises questions about whether green areas should follow the same management approach as other urban infrastructures, such as mobility infrastructures, or whether they should explore a collaborative approach designed to engage diverse stakeholders. This article examines the challenges of innovating in urban forests, changing the management rules that may limit participatory and deliberative processes to support decision-making. In particular, we analyzed how introducing a co-creation stage impacted the traditional competitive public tender procedure in the Madrid Metropolitan Forest project, using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Results showed that the costs and benefits of innovation differ among involved actors, generating unintended deterrent effects for experimentation. To mitigate these decoupling effects, we suggest a strategic design of working rules and updating the shared incentive to move from a competitive and transactional logic to a more collaborative and co-creative form of connection.

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'The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he [sic] will be in fast company, and that, in order to keep up, he may have to emulate the Futurists and discard his whole cultural load, including the professional garments by which he is recognized as an architect. If, on the other hand, he decides not to do this, he may find that a technological culture has decided to go on without him.' These cautionary, and still relevant, words by Rayner Banham in his book 'Theory and Design in the First Machine Age' are very telling of the key challenge of dealing with the implications of technology in our cities. [...]@en

This issue of Footprint explores specific spatialities and materialities found across those operational landscapes of primary production that constitute the metabolic basis of urbanisation. To the extent that these landscapes are increasingly automated and digitised, production and circulation practices are becoming more capital intensive and even less labour-intensive. While amplifying the precarity of human labour, this process relies on appropriating the work of more-than-human assemblages of machines, plants, animals and microorganisms. Central to the focus of this issue is understanding the way these processes are grounded in specific architectural and landscape configurations. In this way, we also aim to complement the debates on past issues of Footprint, offering an investigation of the impact of technological transformations beyond the concentrated landscapes of human inhabitation.@en

The Open Society appeared as a concept in planning discourse at the Congrès
International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM XI). It attempted to create urban
conditions which would allow society to prosper. Despite its good theoretical
intentions, the project did not always translate well into practice. We observe that
historic approaches and tools have tended to be neglected in urban regeneration
projects and discussions, yet we think that they can bring valuable urban
transformations. This paper therefore considers the extent to which historic
planning tools and theories can be useful for assessing built projects to provide
fresh approaches for urban renovation. This paper will reappraise the concept of
the Open Society empirically by analysing, critiquing, and imagining its relevance
in twenty-first-century planning projects and discourse. This research uses a
mostly qualitative approach through critical cartographies as a main medium and
to draw conclusions that highlight the power relations in the Dutch neighbourhood
of ‘t Hool (Eindhoven) as well as the local conditions and materials that can enable
them to plan for a more resilient future. We aim to bridge the gap between theory
and practice through a methodology that allows for a broader and deeper
understanding of place, history, potentials, and urgencies.@en

This article analyzes the acceptance of climate policy measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam to understand how policy and planning interrelate with private and public interests. While legitimizing climate policy and measures, values can also cause conflict when operationalized locally. By analyzing value conflicts in public discourse, we gain insights into questions of environmental behavior and their influence on the acceptance of climate action. We report on quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis covering 410 articles from Dutch newspapers between 2015 and 2021 in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam related to the energy transition, mobility, and urban greening. Our findings show that public discourse mostly remains abstract and detached from local contexts. As experts and politicians dominate the debate, the discourse mainly addresses science- and policy-related arguments, representing the public interest but reflecting only insufficiently private interests and the local (re-)distribution of benefits and burdens. Therefore, we attribute spontaneous protest to the lack of reference to differentiated values at the local level and find the argument of NIMBYism insufficient to explain residents’ opposition. Instead, our findings point to experts’ and decision-makers’ lack of recognition of the local “idea of place” and a community’s identity as an explanation for the sudden emergence of protests. Here, urban design may bridge the gap between policy and planning by translating technical and economic constraints into place-specific designs.@en

This paper examines the tension between political efforts to implement climate goals in urban planning and design and the acceptance of climate adaptation measures at the local level. We hypothesise that, while there is consensus on the desirability of climate goals, the implementation of such concerns can lead to conflicts causing delay or hindrance. We argue that a holistic understanding of the causes and motivations for protests and resistance, often described as NIMBYsm, can help increase acceptance among citizens and inform governance processes. Our analysis focuses on the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, especially on current initiatives and plans related to energy transition (wind turbines), mobility (traffic and parking restrictions), and urban water and heat management (urban greening). We report on a quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis covering articles from Dutch public media about climate resilience plans and the implementation of climate adaptation measures. Our study covers the period from 2015 to 2020, i.e., from the Paris Climate Agreement to the development of the Environmental Vision and the Climate Neutral Roadmap 2050. The analysis also considers publications of relevant public institutions and administrative bodies on climate goals and implementation strategies. Debates on large-scale environmental measures, such as flood control, tend to focus on public interest and compensation processes. Yet, when discussing climate adaptation measures in cities, private interests, e.g., the protection of ownership, property value, and character of place, often dominate. These arguments often reflect conflicting social values, such as perceived limitations of freedom of choice, but may also be related to a lack of influence in decision-making processes. @en

The concept of the Open Society appeared in the CIAM discourse of the 1950s as an attempt to create condition in the city for society to prosper. These good intentions at the theoretical level did not always translate into success stories in practice, and some of the consequences of such a gap can be still felt today, amplified by multiple crises (social, economic, environmental, etc.). Often, the consequence is decay and demolition. The availability of vast knowledge and the emergence of different urban theories and tools since the 1950s allows for new possibilities to reinterpret the values underpinning the concept of the Open Society, and to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Our hypothesis is that an historically situated appraisal of the Open Society is necessary to bring it up to date and renew and enrich its legacy towards social, economic, and environmental resilience. Thus, we formulate the question: to what extent is the concept of the Open Society still relevant in contemporary urbanism? This study proposes a two-pronged investigation into the Open Society (both empirical and theoretical). It aims to investigate the discursive and projective validity of the concept as follows: First, critically review the theoretical concept and its implementation from the perspective of global and contemporary frameworks of discourse and policy. Second, empirically review two case studies (’t Hool, the Netherlands and Montbau, Spain) that illustrate the phenomena and patterns that have arisen in the friction between place, Open Society ideals, and resistance generated by users. This research uses a mixed-methods approach (i.e. quantitative and qualitative) and includes critical cartographies to critically and sensitively examine the two case studies and draw conclusions to highlight power relations and the existing materials available for building a more resilient future. In this way, we attempt to bridge the theory-practice gap by providing a methodology that provides a broad and deep understanding of the places, their histories, and their potentials and urgencies.@en

The concept of “urban forest” (UF) is gaining momentum in urban planning in the context of climate adaptation. Principles from the field of urban forestry are mainstreamed into urban planning, but little is known about effective tools for the successful implementation of new UFs. This article presents explorative research comparing how three cities (Almere, Madrid, and Boston) are dealing with the planning of a UF project, and their alignment with distinct organisational and typological interpretations of a UF. We employed a mixed-methods approach to gain insights into the main goals of the project, their organisational structure, and the employed planning process through the analysis of project documents and expert interviews. Our results point to an effective mainstreaming of environmental questions among stakeholders, but also indicate a poor development of objective criteria for the success of a UF. We note that municipal planners circumvented current internal rigidities and barriers by relying on intermediaries and local academia as providers of external knowledge, or by facilitating experiments. Finally, our results show that there may not be just one UF type to achieve the desired environmental and social goals and overcome implementation barriers. Conversely, each of the governance and organisational models behind the implementation of each type present collaborative and mainstreaming challenges. Therefore, we see an opportunity in further research examining processes and institutions towards the collaborative building of UFs that could bridge gaps between top-down and bottom-up approaches and activate different types of agencies.@en

Between 1929 and 1935, the Bata Shoe Company planned the construction of a series of modern industrial satellite towns in Europe, Asia, and America. From an initial constellation of architecture and urbanism references, Bata’s management and company architects developed a distinct and recognizable urban form across all of the towns. An explanation of the rationale behind the sequence of choices that set the specific trajectory consolidating Bata’s urbanism and, ultimately, its industrial heritage, remains as a gap in the existing literature on the Bata Shoe Company. In this article, the conceptual framework of historical institutionalism is used to study how questions of meaning and social legitimacy, and path dependency influenced the design of the urban form of the Bata Shoe Company towns. The methodology employed involved the triangulation of the study of secondary sources and research into Bata’s archives, with fieldwork in 13 of the towns. The research reveals a process of path dependence of design ideas—with instances of lock-in, positive feedback, increasing returns, and self-reinforcement—which have conditioned their subsequent transformations. This article will posit that interdisciplinary readings on urban history can bring new insights towards a better understanding of industrial heritage resulting from activities by multinational organizations.@en

As if humanity had woken up from a night-long party full of excesses, the sudden realization of being in the Anthropocene fills us with confusion and despair. The accumulation of often unintended consequences of human action reminds us that plans do not always end up in the landscapes of our dreams. What is more, their overwhelming complexity destabilizes our capacity to imagine ways to move forward—a crisis of agency. Lots would be at stake. It is paralysing to think of any solution to climate change or biodiversity loss, less by design. But, what if, simultaneously, such landscapes of unintended encounters, with the technologies, monuments, ruins, traces, and waste of seemingly supernatural forces, may also afford, and teach us, new designs and tools for survival? @en

Urban manufacturing and manufacturers play a vital role in delivering circular economy ambitions through processing materials, providing skills and technology for repair or reconditioning goods and the capacity to deliver innovative technology. The transdisciplinary approach of Cities of Making (CoM) puts forward three ways of addressing manufacturing, and by extension, circularity, within urban areas. Central to triangulate the facilitation of urban manufacturing are the perspectives of (1) material flows and technology, (2) spatial design (3) people and networks. The integration of the three pathways requires convergence while retaining the richness of the three perspectives. The challenge is to find a common language that provides a comparable, operative framework for exploring possible solutions. The CoM framework of integration followed three main principles: (1) reducing the complexity of information, (2) reducing the complexity of combinations of possible solutions, and (3), applying an accessible, applicable instrument for the solutions. The resulting pattern language is co-created in a transdisciplinary setting and is also an instrument for the transdisciplinary application. The low threshold accessible system of solutions allows actors from different disciplines to access patterns developed in the context of another discipline and laypeople who are affected or interested to co-create.@en

Between 1929 and 1935, the Bata Shoe Company planned the construction of a series of modern industrial satellite towns in Europe, Asia, and America. By 1935, however, their development was far from advanced, and their original town plans, following a modernist grid, had been replaced with new ones, based on garden city ideas. A transnational explanation of the conditions that complicated their construction and motivated changes in their design remains as a gap in the existing literature on the Bata Shoe Company. The conceptual framework of sociological institutionalism is used to study how questions of meaning and social legitimacy influenced the design and construction of Bata’s industrial towns in the 1930s. The methodology employed involved the triangulation of the study of secondary sources and research into Bata’s archives, with the analysis of how the urban form of the towns changed through time. The research reveals the institutionalization of ideas on urban planning and architecture within Bata’s structure, and the role of external legitimation in justifying their utilization or withdrawal. Finally, this article will posit that interdisciplinary readings on contemporary urban history can bring new insights into the transformation of the built environment by multinational organizations.@en

Radical innovations in automation and artificial intelligence suggest that we are heading toward a future of work without human workers. The Singularity Is Near, hence experts have rushed in to register the phenomenon. Call it The Second Machine Age, The Third Industrial Revolution, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the era of The Rise of the Robots, or simply, The Inevitable;6 whatever angle of interpretation is taken, these authors speak of looming transformations in how we live and work.@en