The Netherlands needs as many as 2 million new homes by 2040. Climate change and the biodiversity crises call for urban developments to be as biobased and nature-inclusive as possible. But how exactly are we going to achieve this transition?
For example, fibre crops for biobased housing reduce CO2 emissions, while nature-based solutions (NBS) can enhance biodiversity, dampen climate change, and visibly increase resilience. In the 21st century, urban green space is the key to a high-quality living environment for people and nature. Social, environmental, economic, technical, and governance innovation will be required to make it a forceful transition. Moving towards a high-quality urban living environment is necessary, but for this, we need to develop green initiatives that complement housing and the city's other tasks.
The Innovation & Urban Green Space professorship, with a team of broad expertise in ecology, urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, hydrology and business administration, is happy to commit to this goal with practice partners by sometimes playing an exploratory role towards the innovation of spatial design and other times precisely monitoring experimental urban area developments on governance arrangements and ecological and social qualities. Our research always looks for practical solutions to wicked problems and immediately analyses their scaling-up opportunities towards nature-based cities.
Together with students from the Earth & Climate, Applied Biology, and Geo Media & Design programmes, we explore ways urban green space can be more valuable to city dwellers. The profession works closely with various partners from practice, including the Municipality of Almere, Province of Flevoland, Stichting Steenbreek, PRICE, and knowledge institutes at home and abroad.
Would you like to know more about the professorship Innovation & Green Urban Space or explore cooperation opportunities? If so, please get in touch with Spanjar.
