Centre for the Just City — TU Delft
Research
projects
The Centre’s research portfolio spans European-funded consortia, books, and partnerships with municipalities and civic organisations. Each project develops a particular angle of our work on spatial justice, governance, and democratic urbanism.
§ 01 — Portfolio
Where the
Centre works.
Our projects move between research and practice. Some build conceptual frameworks and benchmarking tools for cities pursuing climate neutrality and equitable adaptation. Others examine how rural regions can transform without leaving communities behind, or assemble international networks of planners working against the technocratic grain of the field. A growing strand turns toward co-creation and the urban commons, examining how communities, municipalities, and universities shape urban futures together, as in the Spoorzone in Weert.
The cards below set out the projects currently active at the Centre, the people leading them, the funding behind them, and where to find out more.
§ 02 — Active projects
The work,
step by step.
Horizon Europe
UP2030
Urban Planning & Design Ready for 2030
UP2030 supports cities in driving the socio-technical transitions required to meet climate-neutrality targets through urban planning and design. The Centre leads the work package on the spatial-justice framework and the benchmarking of carbon-neutrality strategies.
- Climate neutrality
- Spatial justice
- Benchmarking
- Co-design
Horizon Europe
RURALITIC
Rural Transformations, Inclusive Communities and Territorial Cohesion
RURALITIC explores how Europe’s rural areas are changing, investigating demographic change, mobility, economic restructuring, environmental transitions, and evolving rural-urban relationships. The Centre contributes expertise on territorial justice, spatial planning, governance, and citizen participation, keeping inclusion, representation, and equitable development central to debates on rural transformation.
- Rural transformation
- Territorial justice
- Citizen participation
- Regional development
RAAK-PRO
ENGAGED
The Equity Nexus of Governance, Adaptation Planning & Design for Urban Climate Resilience
ENGAGED investigates how cities can adapt to climate change in ways that are not only effective but equitable. Working with municipalities, community groups, knowledge institutes, and practitioners across the Netherlands, the project integrates social vulnerability, participation, and climate justice into adaptation governance, planning, and design. The Centre leads the work package on stakeholder engagement and develops participatory methods for equitable climate adaptation.
- Climate justice
- Urban climate adaptation
- Stakeholder engagement
- Spatial planning
Book project
Insurgent Planning Practice
Eleven chapters from contributors working in diverse socio-political contexts ask what insurgent planning practice looks like on the ground, how radical planners cope with technocratic norms, and how everyday practice can advance democratisation and the right to the city.
- Insurgent planning
- Right to the city
- Participation
- Democracy
PhD project
Co-Creating Spatial Justice in Urban Living Labs
Value-Sensitive Urban Transformation through Civic-Academic Collaboration
Using the revitalisation of the Spoorzone in Weert as a living laboratory, this PhD project investigates how Urban Living Labs can support more just and inclusive urban transformation through value-sensitive co-creation. Situated at the intersection of spatial justice, the Right to the City, participatory action research, and critical urban design, it examines how co-creative planning can move beyond instrumental participation towards procedural and recognitional justice.
- Spatial justice
- Urban Living Labs
- Co-creation
- Value-sensitive design
Actieagenda Ruimtelijk Ontwerp
Zorgzame Leefomgevingen
Caring Living Environments — Research by Design
Commissioned under the Dutch national Actieagenda Ruimtelijk Ontwerp 2025–2028, this project investigates what research-by-design can contribute to the spatial and societal transitions facing the Netherlands. Caroline Newton served as scientific advisor to design studio Falsework, analysing ten design-research projects on caring living environments and contributing an essay, ‘Naar zorgzame leefomgevingen: over ontwerp, rechtvaardigheid en moed’, which proposes a four-part compass for design practice grounded in Spatial Justice theory: justice as a hard foundation, health and care, interscalar thinking, and institutional courage.
- Research by design
- Caring environments
- Spatial justice
- Capabilities approach
Humanitarian design
WHO Techné Clinic Refurbishment Helpdesk
Pro Bono Pandemic Response
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Caroline Newton ran a pro bono TU Delft helpdesk supporting the World Health Organisation’s Techné network in refurbishing clinics and hospitals to treat patients with severe acute respiratory infections, advising on safe, low-cost adaptations of existing buildings in resource-constrained settings. The work fed into the WHO’s practical manual for designing, setting up, and managing SARI treatment facilities, published in 2024 with Newton as external expert.
- Humanitarian design
- Health infrastructure
- COVID-19 response
- Pro bono advisory
PhD research
Pandemic-Proofing Cities
From Building Blocks for Pandemic-Proof Living Environments to the A.U.R.A. Framework
This research line began with Building Blocks for Pandemic-Proof Living Environments, a four-year TU Delft-funded project launched in 2020 by Caroline Newton and Rachel Lee, and is developed further through Abhijeet Chandel’s PhD on pandemic-proofing cities. Its central contribution, the A.U.R.A. framework, reconceives spatial capital as a capacity produced through everyday practices of access, use, resistance, and adaptation, giving planners a tool for diagnosing how spatial injustice is produced and contested. The framework was piloted in a workshop with ninety-two participants and published in Planning Practice & Research in 2026.
- Pandemic resilience
- Spatial capital
- Spatial justice
- PhD research
Erasmus+ KA220-HED
SArPe
Socially Situated Architectural Pedagogies
SArPe builds a network of educators developing more socially engaged, situated approaches to architectural pedagogy, sharing tools and methods for participatory, community-engaged design teaching across partner schools. Caroline Newton contributes as project partner.
- Architectural pedagogy
- Participatory education
- European network
Book / Monograph
Envisioning Spatial Justice
Explorations, Reflections and Design Approaches
The culminating publication of Caroline Newton’s Van Eesteren Fellowship (2019–2024), a five-year position at the Department of Urbanism funded by the EFL Stichting. The monograph draws together research developed across the fellowship into a sustained argument about spatial justice, combining theoretical reflection with design-based explorations of how injustice is produced, contested, and redressed in space. Published by JapSam Books in 2025, the book was selected for the AA School bookshop’s ‘10 must-read books’ list in October 2025.
- Spatial justice theory
- Design research
- Monograph
- Van Eesteren Fellowship
Union for the Mediterranean
UfM Urban Agenda
Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040 for the Mediterranean
The UfM Urban Agenda operationalises the Union for the Mediterranean’s commitment to sustainable urbanisation, adopted by ministers in charge of housing, municipal affairs and urban development of UfM Member States at the Second UfM Ministerial Conference on Sustainable Urban Development, held in Cairo on 22 May 2017. Centre director Roberto Rocco co-authored, with Carola Hein and Remon Rooij (TU Delft), the resulting UfM Strategic Urban Development Action Plan 2040, published by the Union for the Mediterranean in July 2021 in institutional partnership with UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and with financial support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Action Plan sets out six integrated strategic actions — coordination and policy cohesion, education and capacity-building, joint visioning and governance, infrastructure connection and protection, implementation and management, and monitoring and communication — as a cross-sectoral framework for urban regeneration across the Euro-Mediterranean region. A companion Housing Action Plan (Axis of Intervention 1), developed with housing consultant Julie Lawson (RMIT), sets out a dedicated framework for affordable and sustainable housing provision.
- Urban governance
- Mediterranean cooperation
- Policy framework
- Housing