MANIFESTO FOR THE JUST CITY VOL. 1
This book addresses the need to re-imagine and re-conceptualise the Just City in light of recent systemic shocks: climate change, the pandemic, a generalised erosion of democratic standards and more. It contains texts by a number of guests and 43 manifestos written by students from 25 universities from all over the world.
Free download HERE.
MANIFESTO FOR THE JUST CITY VOL. 2
The Manifesto for the Just City comes in the wake of the realisation that socio-spatial justice is a crucial dimension for sustainability transitions. Growing inequality and the erosion of the public sphere undermine the social and political structures required to fight climate change, pandemics and other systemic shocks. At the same time, profound cynicism and scepticism have gripped our minds. This is paralysing us. Following the words of Professor Faranak Miraftab, we need to decolonise our minds, and try to imagine a different world and new kinds of relationships among ourselves and between us and the planet.
Free download HERE.
MANIFESTO FOR THE JUST CITY VOL. 3
This is the third volume in the “Manifesto for the Just City” series published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing. This project is spearheaded by the Centre for the Just City at the Delft University of Technology. The Manifestos in this book endeavour to envision alternative, positive urban futures as a counterpoint to prevailing cynicism and political disillusionment. This exercise is primarily based on the ideas of Professor Faranak Miraftab on practices of hope and decoloniality. The 81 Manifestos written by 313 students from 63 universities around the world come in the wake of a four-part workshop in October 2022, in which TU Deft, together with its many partners, invites students from all over the world to listen to the accounts of leading academics and practitioners whose knowledge touches aspects of spatial justice and to articulate their ideas for what makes the just city.
Free download HERE.
JANE JACOBS IS STILL HERE
On the occasion of Jane Jacobs’ 100 anniversary, the chair of Spatial Planning and Strategy of the Delft University of Technology, together with the OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment and the Rotterdam Erasmus University College organised a two-day conference on Jane Jacob’s legacy at TU Delft on 24-25 May 2016. This event was complemented one year later by a ‘Jane Jacobs Year’ closing event.
Free download HERE.
artificial intelligence,
real consequences
Despite the potential to facilitate several tasks and improve the collective well-being of humans, there are still many open questions about social, legal, ethical, and democratic impacts of AI that have to be addressed. As more complex AI methods are developed, uncertainty around these questions grows and more action is needed if we want to safely employ AI within society. Understanding these dimensions of AI is essential to shape our future society with AI.
Free download HERE.
Does the sun shine for all?
This paper adopts an equity perspective to analyse the transition to solar (photovoltaic) energy in the city of The Hague, The Netherlands. Access to solar energy is at the core of the research, encapsulating factors that influence the ability of a household to adopt solar energy. Through a socio-spatial analysis at the postcode level, we identify four distinct groups with varying levels of access to solar energy. Our results show that these groups are not only strongly segregated across the city but also overlap with existing socio-spatial inequalities. The four levels of access to solar energy are then compared to current solar adoption rates and technical rooftop energy potential in the city. Results show that decreasing levels of access to solar energy align with decreasing adoption rates, revealing that current policies fail to provide equitable access to solar energy leading to inequalities in adoption rates.
Open access HERE.
Symposium Education for Water Resilient Cities
A one day symposium at the
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Delft University of Technology
On what to teach and how to teach spatial planning and design for water sensitive, climate resilient cities and communities.
Read it HERE.
Download it HERE.
SUMMER SCHOOL 2022 REPORT
The Summer School Planninng & Design for the Just City takes place every July at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment (Bouwkunde)
of the Delft University of Technology. The school is a partnership between Bouwkunde and the Faculty of Technology Policy and Management of the TU
Delft. The school is supported by the Delft Global Initiative, the Delft Design for Values Institute and the MOOC Rethink the City. For more information click HERE.
Read it HERE.
Download it HERE.
URBAN THINKERS CAMPUS 1
Education for the City We Need
Between 7 and 9 June 2017, the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of the TU Delft organised an Urban Thinkers’ Campus (UTC) on Higher Education for the New Urban Agenda (NUA), titled “EDUCATION FOR THE CITY WE NEED”. As we know, the NUA will guide the efforts of a wide range of actors around urbanisation — nation states, city and regional leaders, international development funders and civil society — for the next 20 years. After the enactment of the document, attention has shifted towards IMPLEMENTATION: how to implement its principles?
We believe that universities have a special role in preparing young professional and critical citizens to face the challenge of making our cities sustainable, prosperous, fair and inclusive.
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URBAN THINKERS CAMPUS 2
The New Urban Normal: Urban Sustainability and Resilience Post COVID
The COVID19 pandemic has exposed several systemic failures and injustices in the way cities are planned and designed around the world. It has also exposed the failings due to lack of planning in most places in the Global South. Careful, inclusive and participatory spatial planning is thought to greatly strengthen the capacity of societies to withstand systemic shocks, as testified by the New Urban Agenda (2016), the Pact of Amsterdam (2016) and the New Leipzig Charter (2020).
Download it HERE.
Confronting informality
A one day symposium on preserving Communities and Creating Public Goods in Informal Settlements, 7 June 2018, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism, Section Spatial Planning and Strategy.`A one day symposium on preserving Communities and Creating Public Goods in Informal Settlements, 7 June 2018, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department of Urbanism, Section Spatial Planning and Strategy.
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iNSURGENT PLANNING PRACTICE
Edited by Roberto Rocco and Gabriel Silvestre. Published by Agenda, UK. Forthcoming in 2024.
Link to the publisher’s HERE.
This book investigates insurgent planning practices and their potential for alternative forms of civic engagement and democracy-building. It explores how planners can challenge technocratic planning by incorporating notions of participation, inclusion, trans-sectionality and the right to the city into their daily practices. Each chapter delves into those daily practices to answer: What does insurgent planning practice look like in practice? How are radical planners coping with traditional, technocratic planning as practised in most places around the world? And what do they do to advance an agenda of democratisation and the right to the city, counteracting neoliberal forms of governance?
the routledge handbook on informal urbanisation
The Routledge Handbook on Informal Urbanisation investigates the mutual relationship between the struggle for political inclusion and processes of informal urbanisation in different socio-political and cultural settings. It seeks a middle ground between two opposing perspectives on the political meaning of urban informality. The first, the ‘emancipatory perspective’, frames urban informality as a practice that fosters autonomy, entrepreneurship and social mobility. The other perspective, more critical, sees informality predominantly as a result of political exclusion, inequality, and poverty. Do we see urban informality as a fertile breeding ground for bottom-up democracy and more political participation? Or is urban informality indeed merely the result of a democratic deficit caused by governing autocratic elites and ineffective bureaucracies?
Learn more HERE.
the spatial Justice handbook
The Spatial Justice Handbook is a practical guide for planners, designers, and policymakers seeking to embed justice in urban transformation. It translates complex theory into actionable methods, tools, and case studies, helping practitioners assess, benchmark, and advance fairness, inclusion, and democracy in spatial planning and governance.
Download the book HERE.
TEACHING DESIGN FOR VALUES
Edited by Roberto Rocco, Amy Thomas and María Novas-Ferradás.
The process of identifying, interpreting, and implementing societal values in university education is an essential part of responsible innovation and designing for equitable, inclusive, and sustainable societies. While there is now a well-defined and growing body of research on the theory and application of designing for values (or ‘value sensitive design’), at present the pedagogical dimension remains underexplored. Teaching Design for Values: A Companion is a resource for teachers of design-based disciplines who wish to foreground values more explicitly in their classes. With fourteen chapters written by both TU Delft educators and international contributors, the book aims to examine the concepts, methods and experiences of teaching design for values within a variety of fields, including urbanism, engineering, architecture, artificial intelligence and industrial design. Through its multi-disciplinarity, Teaching Design for Values proposes an expanded definition of ‘design’ to encompass a broad range of disciplines and processes that deal generally with ‘future-imagining’ and ‘futurebuilding’, including process management. In doing so it explores the ways that values may be expressed and analysed in a variety of different pedagogical contexts.
Download the book HERE.
Envisioning spatial Justice
By Caroline Newton & contributors
By Caroline Newton. Envisioning Spatial Justice is both a reflection and a proposition. It synthesises insights accumulated through research and teaching and from years of collaborating with students whose graduation projects placed justice at the core of their spatial investigations. Structured around theory, reflection, and design, the book explores what it means to design with justice in mind. Challenging neoliberal paradigms and drawing on feminist, post-colonial, and radical urban theory, it insists on the political power of imagination. It calls for developing new ethical foundations for spatial practice. Part provocation, part toolkit, part manifesto, Envisioning Spatial Justice speaks to urbanists, designers, educators, and activists committed to co-creating more just and inclusive futures.
Learn more HERE.
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