This thesis examines the potential of small, low-carbon, (near) zero-energy dwellings as a solution that would both address sustainability challenges and answer to the growing housing shortage in North-West Europe. It adopts a multidimensional outlook that encompasses institutional, social and technical aspects surrounding the dwellings. The institutional aspect is addressed through an investigation of financial, legislative, technical and cultural barriers to the implementation and uptake of small, low-carbon, zero-energy dwellings. A context specific approach is adopted taking into account contextual peculiarities for the formulation of more refined policy suggestions. The social dimension is addressed first from the perspective of market supply through an investigation of the perceptions of housing professionals. The distinction between perceived versus actual barriers identified by housing professionals is made highlighting a potential desynchronization between policy developments and local practice. Accordingly the study calls for innovation in information dissemination between policy and local practice and between housing professionals themselves. The social dimension is then addressed from the perspective of market demand through an investigation of consumers’ current housing preferences. The assumption stating that, due to an increase in smaller, elderly, and lower-income households, current housing preferences are leaning towards smaller dwellings is refuted underlining the importance of distinguishing between smallest and smaller dwelling sizes. Lastly, the technical dimension is addressed through conducting a partial life cycle assessment that focuses on the embodied carbon of the dwellings. Both downsizing and the use of low-carbon materials such as timber are investigated as embodied carbon reduction strategies. Together, the three dimensions provide a holistic evaluation of the potential of small, low-carbon, zero-energy dwellings as a solution while addressing the complexity in reaching sustainable outcomes.@en

Guangzhou is one of the biggest cities in China, and it is located in Pearl River Delta, which has a vulnerable natural environment. In history, the development of Guangzhou city was inseparable from its canal system, which was developed from the natural dense river network. On the one hand, this system had played its role in water management very well. It could quickly discharge rainwater into the Pearl River during the rainy season to prevent floods, and it could also function in water storage during the dry season. On the other hand, the canals were also an important part of people's daily life. It carried most of the people's main activities, such as sailing, trade, and socializing. The historic canal system was the lifeline of Guangzhou. However, in the rapid development of the city in the past 100 years, due to the rise of the automobile road system and the improper planning of the drainage system, the historic canals in Guangzhou have gradually left only a single drainage function. Different kinds of industrial wastewater and domestic wastewater are discharged into the canals, causing the canals and the surrounding environment to become bad; at the same time, the river is narrowed and the drainage function has deteriorated. In the rainy season, the surrounding area of the river is often flooded. The historic canals have gradually become the backside of the city, the disease of the city.
In recent years, the government has begun a series of restoration projects for historic canals. However, these projects just aimed to copy-paste the historic scenes to attract tourism and did not pay attention to the historic canal itself and the surrounding communities. As a landscape designer, how the historic canals worked with the city in history has greatly fascinated me, and I have concluded design principles from it, seeking their possibilities in the current situation. This project is not about restoring the canals, is about learning from the history, and designing the historic canal system of Guangzhou as urban landscape infrastructure.

Due to several factors, under which the widespread flexibilization in the job market and the fact that it ended up becoming more difficult to take out a mortgage, middle-income households ended up not having access to owner-occupied housing in Dutch urban areas. Also, middle-income households’ incomes are too high to qualify for the social housing segment. Therefore, they depend on private rental housing in the Randstad. However, there is a shortage of private rental housing. Due to this lack of private rental housing, rental housing prices have increased tremendously. And this occurred while households’ incomes have not been rising to the same extent. Furthermore, organisations that rely on key workers have a more difficult time finding employees in urban areas. Middle-income households, including the households that can potentially fill up these vacancies, are often forced to move to other areas to find housing that fits their preferences. Therefore, it is essential to gain knowledge of how private rental housing for middle-income households can become affordable. Having knowledge of housing affordability in relation to housing preferences is vital to understand how the private rental housing supply for middle-income households can be increased and preserved in urban areas. Therefore, this research seeks to answer: “How can the rental housing supply in urban areas in the Netherlands, that is affordable for middle-income households, be increased following their preferences?” With this research question posed, the research aims to provide insight into middle-income households' housing affordability. It also aims to present the middle-income households’ rental housing preferences. To reach this aim, the methodology applied in this research is a mixed-method with an embedded design. This research made use of the WoON 2018 data and the semi-structured interview method. To conclude, the findings of this research were validated by an expert panel. The comprehensive quantitative research, regarding what middle-income’s housing preferences are, demonstrated that these preferences are not sufficiently affordably facilitated in Groot-Amsterdam. Delving into these results together with the qualitative research, this study determined what instruments could be used to increase and preserve the affordable rental housing supply for middle-income households following their housing preferences. This research evinced that in Groot-Amsterdam, housing with five rooms is not sufficiently facilitated in the mid-segment rental housing supply. Additionally, for the couple, couple-one-child, couple-two-children, couple-three-children, and one-parent-three-children households earning a gross annual income near €36,798, mid-segment rental housing is not affordable. In order to provide affordable housing for all middle-income households, the central government should assume a more active role in steering toward increasing the mid-segment rental housing supply. Thereby, they should enlarge the housing associations’ playing field. Furthermore, they should limit their role to spatial planning, providing infrastructure, and providing monetary means. Next to that, there should be a balance between municipal demands on development programmes and land prices. Together, the municipality and market actors should determine the demands of the development programme. An independent third party should calculate the residual land value.

The Dutch government has set the goal for the Dutch housing stock to be independent of gas by 2050. The funding for the needed energy efficiency retrofits is a bottleneck in the process. Owner occupiers within condominium associations come across many barriers in the application process for funding. One of which is the lack of a well suited funding mechanism. If implemented right, building-bound financing may be the solution to the funding problems. Seeing as it is a non-existing type of funding. The following research question was used: What is needed for building-bound financing to be an operable funding for owner occupiers in Dutch condominium associations to support energy performance retrofits? With use of the Governance Assessment Tool and a stakeholder analysis, the current situation of condominium associations with respect to sustainability policy and funding are analysed. From there backcasting is used to depict what changes are needed for successful implementation of building-bound financing for owner occupiers in condominiums. A institutional structure along with a list of coordination problems is provided, to depict what is has to be arranged for building-bound financing. It was found that the problem entails more than a new funding mechanism is able to solve. Furthermore, it was found that an opt-out option for funding is also a possible solution for the problems found. Further research is needed into the operation of the structure and the societal support for it.

LiDAR technologies are used to measure point cloud data of the earth's surface. The usage of LiDAR allows for the fast collections of massive data sets. The AHN2 point cloud data set, part of Rijkswaterstaats initiative to map the surface of the Netherlands, contains 639 478 217 460 points. For efficient visualization in web viewers, these massive point clouds are stored in an octree data structure. Visualization through this method has the downside of discretely visualizing the point cloud. These discrete artefacts are referred to as density jumps, and are visible where there is a boundary between blocks retrieved from the octree. These blocks contain different densities because they are retrieved from different levels of the octree. This thesis proposes a continuous visualization method for massive point cloud data sets that aims to eliminate these density jumps. While the continuous visualization of vector data sets has been extensively researched, this is a novel field of research for point cloud data sets. This thesis explores the feasibility of a vario-scale visualization method, and aims to implement it in an existing web viewer architecture. Due to the massive nature of the AHN2 data set, cloud computing and distributed computing techniques are used to imrove the workflow. The presented methodology removes the \textit{density jumps} by determining an upper density bound for the point cloud density relative to the camera position. Circle packing theory is used to reinforce the upper bound continuously, thus removing artefacts created by discrete density jumps. A proof-of-concept for this theory is implemented in an existing point cloud web viewer architecture.

The global population is ageing at a rapid pace, accordingly many countries implement ageing in place policies to prevent unmanageable growth of costs of institutionalised care settings. Like many other countries, the Dutch government also shifted towards ageing in place policies to reduce the costs of institutionalised care settings. Ageing in place is aimed at allowing the elderly to live independently and stay part of the community. Therefore, policies and services are increasingly aimed at supporting the elderly in ‘place’, where ‘place’ consists of the dwelling and its surrounding environment. However, the current ‘place’ may not always be the best option for the elderly to receive care and support in order to age in place. The playing field of housing and care has made a significant transition since the decentralisation of the General Act on Exceptional Medical Expenses. Due to the changes in national policy and legislation, the binary perspective on housing for the elderly, in the conventional market or traditional institutions, has been expanded to include a potential spectrum of housing models to age in place. By disconnecting supportive functions, such as housing, care and welfare, from the traditional institutions, a new playing field has arisen for housing models to age in place between the traditional family home and the traditional institutions. Furthermore, public and individual responsibilities have shifted. The municipality has been given the responsibility to develop a strategy on ageing in place and the elderly have become responsible for choosing a 'suitable' place to age. However, municipalities, elderly and other stakeholders have their own perspective on the definition of a suitable ‘place’ to age, therefore municipalities, elderly and stakeholders have their ‘own language’ with regard to housing models to age in place. This leads to a so-called ‘dialogue of the deaf’ during the process of development and realisation of housing models to age in place. The new playing field of housing and care grants the opportunity to develop new supportive ‘places’. In order to provide supportive ‘place’ for the elderly, municipalities are able to proactively facilitate stakeholders in the development and realisation of housing models to age in place. This study offers an instrument that supports the coordination task of Dutch municipalities in order to develop and realise housing models to age in place.The basic functioning of the framework is as follows. The combination of the residential object and the variables in the inter- and external dimension reflect what a housing model to age in place entails. Within each variable, several options or combination of options are available to define the variable, where the prerequisites can be predefined options that need to be included in the model when developing a new housing model to age in place. The diverse variables are able to ‘build’ a variety of housing models within the new spectrum of ageing in place, therefore the variables are labelled as building blocks. Based on this study, three applications of the framework have been defined in order to support the coordination task of Dutch municipalities in order to develop and realise housing models to age in place.The first application of the framework is focussed on structurally collecting data on preferences of the elderly on local scale in relation to housing models to age in place. The framework can be used as a tool to gather data of the preferences of the elderly in relation to housing models to age in place. Findings based on the data collected on the preferences of the elderly in relation to housing models to age in place can be used to define prerequisites, which can be taken into account when developing a housing model to age in place. By exposing the demand for housing models to age in place through the use of the framework, the municipality is provided with data that can be used for both housing and ageing in place policy. The second application of the framework is aimed at creating a frame of reference for municipalities on housing models to age in place. Currently, the new spectrum of ageing in place is mostly unexplored and therefore municipalities have an incomplete frame of reference on housing models to age in place within their municipality borders. Therefore, the framework can be used to enhance the frame of reference on housing models to age in place by analysing existing housing models within municipality borders. The framework offers a ‘template’ for municipalities to structurally organise information on existing housing models to age in place.The final application of the framework focuses on the guidance of stakeholders in relation to the discussion on what a supportive ‘place’ is for the elderly. The framework provides a starting point for ‘shared language’ on housing models to age in place in order to guide the dialogue between stakeholders involved with the development of housing models to age in place. The framework can be used as a guidance in order to break the ‘dialogue of the deaf’ that frequently occurs between stakeholders during the development of housing models to age in place. This application of the framework can be compared to a structured interview with the same questions asked in the same order each interview. In this case, the same building blocks are discussed in the same order each consultation round between stakeholders. Through repeating the process the occurrence of the ‘dialogue of the deaf’ will decrease. The research presents several recommendations. One of the recommendations is focused on bridging the domains of different stakeholders. It became apparent that stakeholders within the playing field of housing and care think too ‘compartmentalised’. While the framework offers an instrument to bridge the domains, it still requires a cultural change to bridge the domains. This means that the stakeholders have to show ‘entrepreneurship and guts’ to successfully develop new housing models to age in place. The municipality will have to take a proactive and facilitating role in order to stimulate stakeholders to ‘look over their own fence’.

A case study in three Dutch municipalities on the effects and effectiveness of the policy instrument of local performance agreements for housing policy in the light of the revised Housing Act

Traditional neo-classical economic theories are failing to explain the current situation in the Dutch housing market. There is a high demand for newly built owner-occupied dwellings, but the production is not increasing as quickly as expected. New Institutional Economics is offering explanations for this situation. The institutions in the development sector changed during the real estate crisis, which caused a disruption of the governance structures. There are still thresholds, even in this favourable time, to form new development alliances. Those thresholds are caused by serval reasons, like financing issues, capacity problems and an increased risk awareness of all the involved parties. Relations should be reinvented, and incentives for market parties should be created to invest early in the development process.

After the global financial crisis in 2008, new developments in the Dutch housing market halted, causing a deficit of available dwellings in the owner-occupied housing market. This in turn has increased the demand for rental housing, resulting in shortages in both the regulated as well as the unregulated rental housing segments. These shortages are most noticeable for lower and middle income households. The lack of supply for low income households sparked societal debate concerning skewed tenants, resulting changes in national housing policy. However, these regulations caused a further decrease in housing options for the middle income households.
As a result, regional residential visions established by municipalities active in Dudok Wonen’s working area have since then had a strong focus on stimulating filtering processes: middle income households residing regulated rental dwellings should move, to make room for low-income households. To stimulate these filtering processes, housing association Dudok Wonen started to offer an intermediate rental segment (consisting out of ex-regulated rental dwellings) exclusively to middle income households, stating that the largest obstacle for the desired filtering processes is the lack of supply available to middle income households. Dudok Wonen assigned this intermediate rental segment ’50-50’ to starting and filtering middle income households. To examine the effect of this measure the following research question arose, to be answered in this thesis: ‘How do the intermediate rental segment and associated housing allocation procedures which Dudok Wonen offers contribute to the desired filtering processes in the municipalities Gooise Meren and Hilversum?’.
To answer this research question, the residential visions in Dudok Wonen’s working area have been reviewed, and literature concerning the topic of residential mobility has been consulted. The selected research methods can be described as a mixed methods research, and involved a quantitative analysis of the available rental segments Dudok Wonen’s working area, a structured web-survey distributed amongst and answered by 806 tenants in Dudok Wonen’s regulated rental segment dwellings and 9 semi-structured interviews conducted with tenants of dwellings offered in Dudok Wonen’s intermediate rental segment.
The quantitative analysis of rental segments was performed to examine whether the characteristics of intermediate rental segments intended for filtering households complied to the characteristics that Dudok Wonen had envisioned to trigger filtering. The intermediate rental segment dwellings were found to be larger than the regulated rental segment dwellings and to have a more beneficial price/quality ratio than unregulated rental segment dwellings, thereby complying to the goals set by Dudok Wonen. This research has also revealed that a majority of the middle income households residing in the regulated rental segment do desire to move, but that only a minority of these households is interested in the intermediate rental segment. The largest contributor to this lack of interest is the lack of knowledge concerning the segment, but the increase in price (compared to the regulated rental segment) and the lack of diversity in quality aspects in which the segment outranks the regulated rental segment are also culprits. The intermediate rental segment as offered by Dudok Wonen predominantly supplies moving triggers to households that are interested in larger dwellings. It is unlikely that households looking for other quality characteristics will be triggered to move by the addition of the intermediate rental segment.
Households that did move to the intermediate rental segment did so in order to have the option to realise (prospective) life-cycle related goals, like starting a family. Although these households were looking for rental dwellings, this preference is a substitute of their actual desire for owner-occupied housing. This substitution behaviour can be attributed to the contemporary housing market situation and regulations.
Despite this substitution behaviour, the intermediate rental segment, as it is currently being offered by Dudok Wonen, is contributing fairly well to stimulating the desired filtering processes in the municipalities Gooise Meren and Hilversum, as it supplies a portion of the middle income households residing in regulated rental dwellings with triggers to move. With the addition of the intermediate rental segment in the regional housing market, Dudok Wonen is stimulating the desired filtering processes not by pushing households to move, but by lowering the thresholds these households need to overcome in order to move. However, although the addition of the intermediate rental segment is beneficial for the desired filtering processes and the options middle income households have in the regional housing market, the associated housing allocation procedures negatively impact the supply available in the regulated rental segment. This report concludes by posing several recommendations for Dudok Wonen to consider, as well a point of critique towards contemporary Dutch housing policy.

This research paper is ment to create a redevelopment vision (PvE) for the area of Schioever in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Hence this paper will analyses the current situation, problems, potentiaal target audience and current market trends. From this analysis a vision will be created.

Housing affordability is a growing problem in the Netherlands. Approximately 15% of all households has a housing cost overburden rate (i.e. spending more than 40% of the household’s disposable income on the total housing expenses). This research explores a new way to contribute to housing affordability. Dwelling-generated revenue is introduced as umbrella concept to catch all potential ideas that may lead to revenue generated by a dwelling or its affiliated services that can be used to reduce housing expenses. A taxonomy of dwelling-generated revenue options is presented. Revenue options can be either object (i.e.: dwelling) or subject (i.e.: resident) bound. Object related revenues are selling a surplus of energy, third party compensation and (sub)letting. Subject related revenues are the monetization of in-home generated data and monetization of recyclable household waste. Through a multi-criteria analysis, in which five housing and innovation experts judged the revenue options, the most promising options are determined. The implementation of those options in the social housing sector is discussed, since most households with payment risks are found within sector.