Eastern European working migrants have become an essential part of the Dutch economy. With the current labor crisis in The Netherlands, they play a vital role in many sectors. Often employed...Show moreEastern European working migrants have become an essential part of the Dutch economy. With the current labor crisis in The Netherlands, they play a vital role in many sectors. Often employed through employment agencies who also take care of their accommodation. There are however many problems with this system and Eastern European working migrants have to deal with far from ideal living situations. This problem is especially true in The Hague, a city that houses over 20.000 working migrants. To tackle this problem, the eightfold path for effective policy making has been used to make a policy recommendation for the municipality of The Hague that can be used to create a better understanding of the housing situation which can be tested to learn if it creates more affordable housing, especially for Eastern European working migrants.Show less
Focusing on the city of Bihać, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), this thesis discusses the ways in which urban space is contested and negotiated between People on the Move (PoM) and Migration...Show moreFocusing on the city of Bihać, Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH), this thesis discusses the ways in which urban space is contested and negotiated between People on the Move (PoM) and Migration Managers. Bihać, a small city in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, has since 2018 become an important node on the so-called “Balkan Route.” The route is traversed by many people from the Global South seeking to migrate to Western Europe. Importantly, Bihać lies some mere 5 km from the Croatian border, making the city an ideal place for PoM to plan their way forward on the route, or rest after an illegal pushback at the border. Often, people in transit irregularly reside in abandoned buildings. Many of such occupied buildings, also known as squats, have been evicted by local Migration Managers repeatedly over the past five years. Yet, despite the evictions, PoM would often come back from the camps where they had been deported, and re-occupy the squats in Bihać. These cycles of evictions and (re)occupations are framed in this thesis as contestations of urban space. Such space contestations, recounted using relational ethnography, are then given further theoretical grounding through the bi-focal lens of biopolitics and resistance. In light of these theoretical elaborations, camps in the area of Bihać are speculatively characterized as biopolitical technologies of control, dispersal, and governance of migrant lives and mobility. In contrast, squats are understood as cases of resistance against the border regime, by virtue of their role as Infrastructures of border crossing.Show less
Modernism, aside from its architectural application, is also presented throughout urban planning. A widely applied modernist approach in city planning, as explored in Japan, is Metabolism. This...Show moreModernism, aside from its architectural application, is also presented throughout urban planning. A widely applied modernist approach in city planning, as explored in Japan, is Metabolism. This thesis will be looking at projects within the Metabolism movement, while also considering the Japanese context and conditions for development. While discussing urban planning, it is common to talk about cities in the same context, which simplifies the planning process and the planning culture of a city. Different factors that build up the concept of planning culture, specifically the Japanese planning culture, will be explored throughout this thesis, using the works of architects related to the Metabolism movement. What is aimed to be discovered is the realisation of metabolic designs in the relation to the aims and priorities of Japanese planning culture.Show less
This thesis discusses the social effects of grassroots involvement in public space through the example of community gardens in Berlin. These spaces exist within processes of change, influencing...Show moreThis thesis discusses the social effects of grassroots involvement in public space through the example of community gardens in Berlin. These spaces exist within processes of change, influencing neighbourhoods both positively and negatively, while also being at risk of displacement. Studying bottom-up engagement within public space informs urban planning of local knowledge, which is essential in creating nuanced, people-oriented policy decisions. While top down approaches of the past have failed to recognize local social effects and drawbacks, a value assessment approach, drawing from Historic urban landscapes, and valuation theory has the opportunity to recognize the plethora of social effects from Grassroots action, and inform decision making. The study investigates what forms of social effects community gardens create within the city, and how these can be better recognised in policy making. The study aims to investigate the creation of new means of valuing the spaces, and understanding how social values are created. The paper is an innovative composite approach that draws on theoretical literature, primary data, and builds a novel framework for evaluating qualitative social effects around community urbanism. While community use of space has strong opportunities for unity, neighbourhood culture, and bottom-up involvement in planning, the delinations of community have the potential to exclude, and damage people's social networks and neighbourhood culture. The value assessment approach recognises the nuance of local knowledge, and could be applied to all sorts of shared urban spaces, such as parks, squares, and streets where grassroots urbanism takes place. Qualitative value assessment such as this framework could allow stakeholders to create more liveable, people oriented neighbourhoods.Show less
Urban farming could be considered as a means of improving several aspects of city life, such as sustainable food provisioning, healthy living environments, climate change effects, and people’s...Show moreUrban farming could be considered as a means of improving several aspects of city life, such as sustainable food provisioning, healthy living environments, climate change effects, and people’s social well-being. Allotment gardening is an increasingly common urban farming initiative, which is an assigned individually-owned plot of land in the city where people could, for example, grow fruits and vegetables, spend time outdoors, or meet other gardeners. Yet, there can be various motivational indicators for why people start practising urban allotment gardening. Despite previous research studies on motivations to contribute to urban farming initiatives, there is still a need to investigate certain research gaps. These include people’s motivation to contribute to urban allotment gardening, and possible differences in motivations between age groups. This research investigates the main motivational indicators of allotment garden owners in Rotterdam, to see whether environmental issues, such as climate change play a role in people's motivation or not. Additionally, the differences in motivational indicators between five age groups were investigated to see whether age has an effect on motivation. A questionnaire survey was conducted, of which the respondents contained 119 practitioners of 12 different urban allotment organisations based in Rotterdam. The results showed that most of the respondents have their allotment garden to spend their leisure time. Additionally, it was found that the interaction between age group and motivational indicator was not significant (p = 0.56). A more extensive research study is required to conclusively understand how the age of allotment gardeners is linked to motivations.Show less
According to UN Habitat, nearly 80% of Addis Ababa’s inner city consists of slums – a figure that has rapidly been changing due to the Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP): a government...Show moreAccording to UN Habitat, nearly 80% of Addis Ababa’s inner city consists of slums – a figure that has rapidly been changing due to the Integrated Housing Development Programme (IHDP): a government-led programme launched between 2005 and 2017 to redevelop inner-city slum areas and subsequently rehouse low- and middle-income residents in peripherally located, subsidised condominium flats. In clearing inner-city land, the IHDP has prompted large-scale displacement of communities and paved way for private sector-led redevelopment. Meanwhile, the relocation to condominiums has been challenging for former slum dwellers as they have had to undergo drastic spatial and lifestyle changes. Such urban transitions have raised questions about the ‘selling out’ of existing communities and who Addis Ababa’s redevelopment is for. Through a discourse analysis, this thesis critically examines how governmental bodies have framed and implemented the IHDP in comparison to the experiences of local populations. Specifically, legal documents informing processes of slum clearance and resettlement to condominiums have been studied within a conceptual framework derived from Scott and Harvey, among other scholars, against the accounts of affected residents. From this study, it becomes clear that the IHDP has been applied in a top-down manner, making a radical departure from local needs and traditions, and furthering the government’s interests of creating a modern and globally competitive city. The thesis concludes that the ‘metis’ found and practiced in disappearing slum settlements needs to be incorporated in the city’s redevelopment plans to reinvent what constitutes a ‘new’, but social and spatially just, Addis Ababa.Show less
The continuous urbanisation of our surroundings has led to an increase in environmental problems. In addition to the process of urbanisation negatively impacting the quality of our environment, it...Show moreThe continuous urbanisation of our surroundings has led to an increase in environmental problems. In addition to the process of urbanisation negatively impacting the quality of our environment, it also directly supports climate change. Consequently, the two major global trends lead to a notable increase in the unpredictability and magnitude of flooding hazards that can cause substantial damage to cities and their population. Though there are preliminary flood prevention strategies already in place, governments and policymakers struggle to formulate more integrated approaches and policies so as to fully prevent adverse consequences originating from extreme flooding events. This thesis studies the extreme pluvial floods that have severely affected many countries and regions in Western Europe, leading to economic decline, infrastructural damages, and loss of life. During two days in July 2021, the sudden appearance of these urban pluvial floods has left many countries such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands devastated by the destruction of their cities and villages as many areas were left submerged underwater. In an effort to understand the effectiveness of already existent adaptation plans and water management policies in averting potential flood events, this paper will provide a comparative analysis of said policies and plans for both the Netherlands and Belgium. Hence, their approach to water management policies will be investigated to evaluate the effectiveness of the measures implemented prior to the extreme urban floods, followed by an evaluation of the adaptations of these policies after the events.Show less
The Schilderswijk neighbourhood in The Hague has been subject to many urban development efforts and has attracted (inter)national attention on account of its infamous reputation propagated in...Show moreThe Schilderswijk neighbourhood in The Hague has been subject to many urban development efforts and has attracted (inter)national attention on account of its infamous reputation propagated in national press outlets. This study sought to examine the existence of a link between urban development and newspaper discourse using a novel approach, incorporating unique archival sources. The analysis indicates that the effects of urban development changed the characterisation of the neighbourhood in Dutch newspapers between 1956 and 2000. The nuances of the research uncovered numerous ways in which the evolution of urban policymaking either helped or disrupted the stigmatisation of the Schilderswijk.Show less
The Arctic region is often portrayed as consisting of pristine, unspoiled nature, small settlements with indigenous communities detached culturally from the rest of the world. In Greenland, and in...Show moreThe Arctic region is often portrayed as consisting of pristine, unspoiled nature, small settlements with indigenous communities detached culturally from the rest of the world. In Greenland, and in other Arctic regions, the opposite is closer to reality. Greenland has been transformed and is transforming into an urban society, not without problems. Post-WII policies that sought to industrialise and modernise Greenlandic societies employed urbanisation as a key method, but left behind a history of trauma related to the forced relocation out of settlements, into an alienating urban society. This thesis argues, that there is a similar pattern unfolding at the moment and that the rationale behind urbanisation in Greenland did not change: it is the economic promise of affluence cities are considered to hold that drives politics of relocation. More lights need to be shed on urbanisation in Greenland, including its drivers and societal implications, as it can pave the way for full independence and could thus initiate the final state of decolonisation.Show less
