The Earth's surface is a complex landscape that is essential for a wide range of applications, from urban planning to environmental monitoring. Digital models of the Earth's surface are generated through mathematical calculations using elevation data collected from various sources and the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) which captures the bare earth's surface topography in 2.5D. The creation of DTM is an approximation of terrain in unsample locations, by using x-y coordinates and one z value. Traditionally, terrain interpolation uses deterministic or geo-statistical methods to calculate elevation. This research would use random forest regression as an alternative method and to compare the results against traditional interpolation. Comparing different locations against traditional interpolation yields similar results overall. Feature importance, within the the points that are closest to the sampled ICESat-2 data point are more significant than other features used in Random Forest model. The correlation between these datasets and the spatial relationship established would impact on the results of the elevation. The improvement overall of using traditional interpolation compared to random forest regression is limited depending on the location and using model trained with local datasets. For model trained on other geographical locations, which shows similar differences.

The Dutch government was mandated by the national court in May 2019 to address high nitrogen-oxide levels, threatening construction permits to be canceled if target values are not met. As the agrarian sector contributed significantly to nitrogen-oxide emissions, reductions in this sector were necessary. Ongoing protests by farmers indicate the unresolved crisis. A government report suggests that around 500-600 high-emission agricultural businesses must cease operations for a substantial impact. Consequently, large cattle farms, known as "mega barns," will become vacant. Traditionally demolished or recycled, their materials may have the potential for repurposing, especially given the projected availability of similar buildings in the next 10-20 years.

Both the European Union and the Dutch Government have set themselves targets to convert their economies from linear to circular before the year 2050. A circular economy means a system in which products and materials are kept within the loop as long as possible, reducing the need for new raw materials and production – reducing energy needs and CO2-emissions in the process. Recycling is currently coming up as a mainline strategy, however, it is considered to be less circular than other strategies, especially compared to reuse. The steel sector is seen as an exemplary industry that recycles a lot but would pose major environmental benefits when shifting the chain towards reuse. Yet, making this shift happen is withheld by certain barriers, especially on the designer’s side. The fact that information on availability, quality and quantity of reusable components is scarce in the critical early phases of the design process, is one of these main barriers.

This thesis attempts to introduce a tool that employs reverse-engineering techniques to analyze and predict the availability of structural steel components in industrial buildings, providing designers with knowledge about potentially available materials as early in the process as possible. By utilizing publicly available data, the tool enables an accurate estimation of the length, type, quantity and quality of the elements. This is done by the use of parametric design software such as Rhino3D, Grasshopper and Karamba3D. The research explores ways of making use of existing structures’ geometry and design requirements in order to predict the structural properties of the load-bearing components. The tool has been tested and evaluated on a series of cases, all of which are industrial farm halls situated in the Netherlands. This case testing has been used to improve and finetune the output results of the tool. In the end, the developed tool is able to predict steel profiles within a +/- 1 profile class range. Additional analyses are incorporated to assess cost savings, environmental benefits, and element quality.

This project deals with the event of disaster; more specifically, the contamination and destruction by a wave of sediment of towns in the Iron Quadrangle and the Rio Doce valley after the rupture of a tailings dam on November 5, 2015, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Through the manipulation and questioning of concepts such as hauntology, ongoingness, contamination, co-constitution, purity and complexity drawn from several theoretical sources, this work proposes a life-affirming site for the circulation of materials, people and knowledge, against the threat of premature death posed by the extractive economy.

The urban challenges of today are plentiful. A million houses need to be built in the next decade, urban development needs to allow for climate adaptation and contribute to the energy transition. It needs to ensure sustainable economic growth potential in a circular and social economic fashion. The active forms of land policy that where standard to the Dutch government prior to the economic crisis of 2008 however are no longer applied in the same level of frequency. Neo-liberal influences have over time shifted the top-down government-led planning approach, to one where private parties need to be incited if there are particular planning questions to be solved. Yet, even when confronted with fragmented land ownership, or the necessity of integrating non-economic-efficient development functions, through facilitative forms of land policy, the government still has a task to shape the environment. Achieving the urban ambitions above is very costly, especially when integrative development is necessary; and without active forms of land policy or heavy forms of public private partnerships, the government can no longer mobilize the incomes gained from land management. According to former studies, it is possible to achieve integrative added value in urban development where private law agreements embody the value capturing arrangements. Little to no study has yet been conducted into how such agreements can do so in the Dutch institutional context, for which reason this thesis has addressed this apparent literature gap through the following research question: How can public parties increase the potential of their value capturing strategies within facilitative land policy using private law agreements in projects of area redevelopment? Through an explorative case study approach, initial lessons -rooted in empirical data- are drawn and abductively translated to formulate more tangible insights. The end product therein is the proposition of an initial theoretical understanding, and to present what Glaser and Strauss would call a ‘running discussion’.

Value capturing within facilitative land policy in a technical sense takes places through agreed-to contributions in the anterior agreement, be they monetary or in-kind. From both literature as well as the case studies conducted it becomes apparent that it is the process preluding the actual agreement that makes possible more integrative forms of value capturing, through for example negotiation or a market-oriented redesign of the anterior process. These more integrative forms however are not necessarily to be understood in a solely financial sense. This thesis proposes to couple the concept of value capturing with the policy mode in the new actionable definition ‘facilitative value capturing*’, and to therethrough see value capturing within a facilitative context as an active exercise of attaining public spatial policy objectives. In conclusion this study proposes to use the definition of facilitative value capturing as a starting point, from the contention that even when public parties cannot or will not take a more risk-bearing role to the development, they still ought to take a proactive role towards achieving their spatial objectives, as they have an inherent responsibility to shape the environment, and facilitative therein needn’t equal laissez faire.

*Facilitative value capturing: "Maximising the way in which the area development contributes to public spatial policy objectives through (synergetic) negotiations, transfer of operational risks or anterior process design."

Social inequility is still part of the current world, not only in the poorer countries but also in the wealthiest once. With the use of gentrification it was tried to hide the poverty by improving the quality of neighbourhoods. Although this improved the liveability and wealthiness of a neighbourhood, it did not improve the lifes of the former citizens as they were forced out. This shows the wrong focus of the regeneration that is often used in deprived neighbourhoods, improving the liveability instead of improving the lives of the citizens. To be able to improve the life of the citizens, it is important to find out what their wishes and needs are, so an urbanist can implement these in the design. Therefore, this thesis researches how an urbanist can establish citizens’ participation as a design method to be able to design life improving neighbourhoods for its citizens. This will be done by answering the main question of: “how can the use of citizens’ participation in the urban design process of the regeneration of deprived neighbourhood improve the liveability?”. To answer this question, research on citizens’ participation, happiness and liveability will be combined with analyses on a case studie to create a new design method for urbanists that is focused on participation as the main way of designing. The manual will show how participation can be used as a design method and how an urbanist should approach this way of designing. The main focus is on the way the urbanist should communicate with the citizens so they will both understand each other.

The Dutch housing market has a shortage and especially a shortage in its middle-segment between, low-income, social housing, and higher-income, homeownership. Because of this, municipalities have become more active in creating middle-segment housing, but most Dutch municipalities have few land positions which has urged them to create middle-segment housing in developments with no or low municipal landownership. The so-called passive land policy. However, this has proved difficult as there no longer are extensive national housing plans which were used in the past. In addition, Dutch municipalities do not have much knowledge on creating more middle-segment housing in developments with a passive land policy. Therefore, this thesis asks what land-use instruments exists in the Dutch passive land policy to create more middle-segment housing and how successful these instruments are in creating middle segment housing.

The passive land use instruments are within their relative typology the regulatory minimal percentages and eternal land lease, stimulating by anterior agreements, and communicational means by policy documents. When analysed it was found that these instruments are more often used in combination with each other. So, in implementation, this meant that some regulatory pressure was given on a developer to make them negotiate with the municipality. After this, the municipalities used stimuli to help create a financially feasible project with middle-segment housing and gave permits or sold (small portions of) land. Moreover, the policy documents were used more in advance to let any market party know what conditions were necessary to make the municipality cooperate with a plan.

Dutch municipalities thus influence the amount of middle-segment housing made by the passive land-use instruments used. Therefore, the municipality negotiated with market parties on projects in a context to create an agreement that is possible. In this several factors and actors played an important role. Most important for the agreement were the financial feasibility and the gaining of permits. The procedure for the permits started after the negotiations and the financial feasibility would be reached through the negotiations in which the municipalities stimulated in kind, by lowering other requirements, or by lowering taxes. The context could also play a role through an abundance of social housing in the area, political will, or land positions. There also seemed to be a correlation between more regulative instruments and less trust or a more strained relationship between the municipality and the developer in the network.

Based on a literature review and expert interviews, a conceptual model is drafted, explaining and visualising successful public-private partnership practice regarding spatial development. Five hypotheses were derived from this model, focussing at the flexibility of the building programmes and the project's phasing, clear project and actor performances as well as financial positions, and continuous monitoring processess. Based on case studies, of the development projects of Hoog Dalem, the Spoorzone 013 and the Schieveste which delivered during the financial and economic crises which started in 2008, it can be concluded that all aforementioned topics are relevant for successful PPP-practice, except for the aspect of clarity regarding actors' financial positions. Based on the case studies, the hypotheses and topics are further elaborated, resulting in recommendations for future PPP-practice.