Urban blue space is increasingly used to refer to an urban waterbody and its waterfront, implying that the waterfront should be a shared public space. Unsurprisingly, increasing competition over the benefits of urban blue space has resulted in issues of justice. While spatial justice is rapidly becoming one of the main planning goals in the global North, in the global South, where central states are often pursuing neoliberal agendas to keep up with developed countries, empirical studies remain few. This thesis evaluates urban blue space regeneration from a spatial justice perspective in Istanbul, a typical example of such a context. An evaluative spatial justice framework is applied to the policy plans for ‘Haliç Marina and Complex Project’, a recent regeneration initiative and hot discussion topic in local and national politics. Using interviews, site observations, and two local Masterplans, a qualitative content analysis (QCA) shows that the plan prioritizes commercial development before spatial justice. The plan seems to be an iteration of developmentalist politics of the national government, and so Istanbul’s blue space is subject to the will of a powerful, entrepreneurial government. While this poses many challenges to spatial justice, a strong resistance movement and a slowly changing political climate stem hopeful. Future studies should extent the empirical database to more different contexts, to identify how the transition from profit-based regeneration towards spatial justice can be achieved.

It is necessary to reduce meat consumption due to its impact on the climate. Various organisations, including the municipality of Amsterdam, are already taking steps to address this issue. However, these efforts often face resistance from the public. This emotional reaction hinders the establishment from implementing meat curtailment policies (MCPs). Therefore, it is essential to investigate the underlying reasons for these emotional reactions and whether these insights can be used to design meat curtailment interventions that cause less emotional responses. Consequently, this research addresses the following question: "What underlies the emotional reaction to reducing the meat supply in company restaurants, and how can these underlying reasons be used to design policies to reduce meat consumption at company restaurants?"

This study employed two research methods: emotion networking and brainstorming. The first part of the study employed emotion networking to explore the reasons behind the emotional reaction. It revealed that reducing meat consumption, whether through meat reduction policies or otherwise, evokes feelings of threats to freedom of choice, coercion, and exclusion. People perceive meat as essential and consume it consciously. These positive feelings about meat reinforce the negative feelings about reducing meat consumption. The underlying reasons for the emotional reactions seem strongly interconnected, with individuals often experiencing multiple underlying reasons.

The second part of the study consisted of a brainstorming session, focused on designing interventions based on the outcomes of the first part of the study. However, the ambiguity and interconnectedness of these emotions and underlying reasons prevented valuable interventions from being designed. This raises a crucial question: what are effective interventions?
The findings of this study contribute to the transition away from meat consumption as it showed that threats to the need to feel socially or culturally included cause resistance against reducing meat consumption, and meat offering at company’s restaurants or MCPs. Moreover, it suggests that there is a negative perception that eating vegetarian means eating meat substitutes, which causes resistance. Also, the lens of transition pain has proven insightful to research resistance against MCPs. Finally, this study suggests that designing effective interventions that do not cause resistance is complex and perhaps impossible. Consequently, it seems valuable to focus on designing interventions that effectively reduce meat consumption. Therefore, the question should be addressed: What is an effective intervention?

This thesis explores the potential for reducing car-use in development area Waterlandkwartier in Purmerend, with a particular focus on soft measures. Using the stage model of self-regulated behavioral change (SSBC) (Bamberg, 2013b) as a framework, this thesis identifies internal factors influencing residents' mobility choices and assesses how soft measures can be effectively implemented to encourage a shift away from car centricity. Additionally, Michie et al.’s (2011) behavioral change wheel was added to the framework to comprehend the external factors that could also influence behavior. A survey conducted among local residents revealed specific areas of focus, including social norms, personal norms, and perceived behavioral control. A comparison with other municipalities and an analysis of existing literature highlighted that while Purmerend's planned hard measures are common, they need to be complemented by soft measures to reduce resistance and encourage voluntary behavioral change. It is recommended that the municipality of Purmerend implements soft measures to complement existing hard measures from their mobility program of requirements (2022a). The soft measures include social norms marketing to normalize reduced car-use by spreading messages that highlight desirable behavior, and antecedent strategies to raise awareness about the negative impacts of car-use on public space, encouraging shifts in personal norms. Residents should be encouraged to set specific, achievable goals for reducing car-use. For shared mobility specifically, mastery and vicarious experiences should be provided through events and media, this can increase perceived feasibility and perceived behavioral control. These findings contribute to the broader conversation on sustainable urban mobility and offer valuable insights for other cities aiming to implement measures to reduce car use.

Feelings of unsafety limits a person’s accessibility and usage of public spaces, especially for women as they experience higher levels of fear compared to men. Hence, gender differences in safety perceptions in public spaces have been widely studied among scholars. However, in such research women, and men, are often seen as a homogenous group, whilst there may be significant differences in in safety perceptions among them. Hence, this research aims to explore the differences in individual safety perception among women in public spaces of Holendrecht, in the south-eastern part of Amsterdam, using qualitative research methods like interviewing and mental mapping. Two identities explicitly come forward, women with a large social network, who are older, live longer in the neighbourhood and have a Surinam or Ghanese ethnicity, tend to report lower levels of feelings unsafe. And those with a small social network in the neighbourhood, who are younger, live there for a shorter period and have a Dutch ethnicity, are more in need of additional factors to enhance their feelings of safety. Such factors are familiarity and physical factors influencing visibility. These results indicate the importance of taking an intersectional approach, to see how social categorization intervene with different perceptions of safety. This way, decisions on maintenance and improving public spaces can be better informed to create more equal access of public spaces.

This research aims to understand the local governance capacity of Amsterdam Oud-Noord and discover how this area, together with its stakeholders, can improve its climate resilience through transformative climate adaptation governance. This was done by first understanding the research area, its challenges and needed climate adaptation, and by identifying the present climate adaptation stakeholders. Secondly, the governance climate adaptation governance capacity was analysed, according to the redevelopment and extension of an existing framework. Transformative governance climate adaptation governance capacity was analysed through four governance capacities; Stewarding, Unlocking, Transformative and Orchestrating capacity, and related indicators. This led to the identification of governance capacity gaps, followed by recommendations for improvement.
The findings indicate that climate adaptation governance capacity is perceived as promising, but all identified indicators show that there is a need for improvement. The most pressing gaps identified are insufficient smart monitoring and insufficient stakeholder synergies. These are suggested to be improved by increasing the awareness and recognition of the value of monitoring. Next to that, accessible general methods should be developed, enabling all types of stakeholders to monitor their climate adaptation. Lastly, our results suggest that a platform should be created where stakeholders can share and coordinate their activities and possible concerns regarding climate adaptation.