A recently published special issue in the journal Transactions of AESOP reflects on the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) – more than 20 years after its initial publication and shortly after the release of newest ‘European planning documents’ (EU Territorial Agenda 2030 & New Leipzig Charter) at the end of 2020. The special issue features...
Learn about the key design strategies required to develop adequate housing and inclusive dwelling environments for sustainable urban development. Global Housing Design EdX Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) Launch on Mar 03, 2021 at 10:00 UTC Length: 6 weeks Price: FREE https://www.edx.org/course/global-housing-design About this course Building adequate housing is a pressing issue worldwide. With close...
Thus opens the blurb of ‘Altered Pasts’. (Evans 2014) The same counterfactual – Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand surviving to succeed Franz Joseph to the Austrian-Hungarian throne is what ‘Der Komet’ (The Comet; Stein 2013) is about. Engaging in our friendly barter, Klaus Kunzmann has made me read this scenario of cultural and linguistic communities cohabiting...
German speakers will recognise the allusion to the Gretchenfrage: one of the characters in Johann Wolfgang Goethe‘s ‘Faust’, an innocent young woman seduced by the chief protagonist secretly in league with the devil asking: Wie hast du’s mit der Religion? – “how do you feel about religion?”. (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gretchenfrage) When reading a campaign folder of one of the 31 parties...
Cities around the world face a growing flood risk as a result of climate change, bringing more extreme weather, more rainfall and more frequent and more severe storm surge events, pushing sea water into the streets. This problem is exacerbated by the rapid urban development, leading to expansion of cities onto flood-prone, low-lying areas, or...
Online SPS Seminar with Prof. Silke Weidner (BTU Cottbus Senftenberg) 4 February 2021, 12:30-13:30 CET, via Zoom Topic: New Leipzig Charter: The Transformative Power of Cities for the Common Good Abstract: After a good two years of very intensive work by all those involved (Silke Weidner was part of the Consortium), the “Leipzig Charter on...
The Portuguese Presidency wants to kickstart the Conference on the Future of Europe promised after the tug-of-war between the European Parliament and the European Council over appointing the President of the European Commission. The underlying issue is whether the EU is an ‘intergovernmental’ or a ‘federal’ construct. Dutch philosopher of law Jaap Hoeksma (2020) looks...
First post-World War II Austrian President Karl Renner (I remember the stamps issued at the occasion of his passing away) has been a Social Democrat since the 1890s. With a view to the Austrian part of the then double monarchy up to a point catering to various national aspirations, in a pamphlet, Renner proposed for...
New book: Wil Zonneveld & Vincent Nadin (eds) (2021) The Randstad: A polycentric metropolis. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. 361 pages, 54 bw illustrations. On New Year’s Eve Routledge published a new book in the series Regions and Cities: The Randstad: a polycentric metropolis. Edited by Wil Zonneveld and Vincent Nadin the book contains 16 chapters...
The Netherlands again needs a Minister of Space. Many political parties go into elections with that intention and in the professional world the call for such a minister has never really died down. He or she should work with a plan, and that plan better be integral. But how do you do that, make an...
Our new publication *The New Urban Normal: Urban Sustainability and Resilience Post-COVID-19* is out and available for download from this LINK. This is the result of the online Urban Thinkers Campus with the same title organised by the Global Urban Laband the group of TU Delft Spatial Planning and Strategy in June 2020. This book was...
The night from 6 to 7 January, 2021 we saw over and over again the surge up the steps of the Capitol sweeping away security guards. Fit for the occasion, amongst the flags I spotted a banner: AMERICANPOPULISTPARTY.COM. I googled it and found a website in what seemed Polish with a link to a private...