Cities around the world are working to build more livable environments, better-quality public spaces, more resilient and sustainable urban economies, lower resource impacts, greater social equity, and other goals of a “new urban agenda.” In this process, the American movement advanced by the Congress for the New Urbanism has been unquestionably influential, if sometimes controversial. This volume presents a distillation of key essays by CNU proponents in their own words, as well as perspe...

This special issue brings together the work of the EU COST Writing Urban Places network. Using narrative approaches to analysis and design, the network highlights the specificity of local urban cultures in contemporary European cities. Drawing on research from a range of disciplines (architecture, urban studies, literary theory, sociology, media studies), the issue explores spatial approaches that promote responsible, site-specific and socially inclusive design strategies for European cities....

The Netherlands was made by humans. Cities, polders, the landscape and even nature reserves have all clearly been shaped by man. The country’s planned development is as unique as it is famous.

This book describes the intriguing history of spatial planning in the Netherlands from the late Middle Ages to the present day. Where does this strong tendency towards regulation and planning come from? Did these thousands of plans always come together? Or did planners and urban designers sometimes ge...

Hoe kan nanotechnologie gebouwen en steden in de toekomst veranderen? Stel je een nieuwe stof voor, dat je zelf kunt aansturen en veranderen. Stel je voor dat dit een nanomateriaal wordt, dat zijn vorm kan veranderen, dat krimpen kan en groeien - dat bijna alles kan doen... Wij noemen dit materiaal Barba. Met Barba zouden wij in staat zijn om onze omgeving aanpassen aan welke wens en behoefte dan ook. Het nieuwste boek uit The Why Factory's Future Cities Series verbeeldt hoe nanomaterialen on...

Architecture and urbanism can contribute to making our cities more resilient to migration. In ‘City of Comings and Goings’ Crimson brings together a cast of European cities that are marked by migration represented through authoratitive essays by local scholars. These cities are also the source of a catalogue of one hundred projects that tackle the issue of migration in many different ways and on different scales. The essays, the catalogue of projects and Crimson’s manifesto-like introdu...

Making Home(s) in Displacement critically rethinks the relationship between home and displacement from a spatial, material, and architectural perspective. Recent scholarship in the social sciences has investigated how migrants and refugees create and reproduce home under new conditions, thereby unpacking the seemingly contradictory positions of making a home and overcoming its loss. Yet, making home(s) in displacement is also a spatial practice, one which intrinsically relates to the fabricat...

In the light of the current housing and environmental crisis and increasing social inequalities, there is a growing sense of urgency for architecture as a discipline to engage with the transformation in housing evident in the postwar period. Rather than conceiving this task as a technical matter, this book proposes to reassess the conditions and legacy of this large and ubiquitous housing stock. By foregrounding the mismatch between constructed cultural, social and ideological narratives and ...

Residential buildings account for a significant amount of the national energy consumption of all OECD countries and consequently the EU and the Netherlands. Therefore, the national targets for CO2 reduction should include provisions for a more

energy efficient building stock for all EU member states.

National and European level policies the past decades have improved the quality of the building stock by setting stricter standards on the external envelope of newly made buildings, the efficienc...