Exploring a Stakeholder Based Urban Densification and Greening Agenda for Rotterdam Inner City—Accelerating the Transition to a Liveable Low Carbon City

Abstract

Work on a liveable low carbon city has often been approached in a technocratic way, not linking to other disciplines and urban practices at a large scale. This paper explores a stakeholder based urban agenda for a more liveable low carbon city by densifying and greening with the case study of Rotterdam inner city. Rotterdam presents a unique European case with a modernistic inner city. Like many North American cities, the inner city for a long time mainly served as a business or shopping district with few inhabitants and few synergetic links between flows, urban functions, and areas. In line with other cities, Rotterdam aims to reduce carbon emissions and provide a high quality of life. To address this, the hypothesis 'densifying and greening leads to a more sustainable inner city', was tested and applied with stakeholders using transition management combined with urban data, modelling, and design. With sustainability indicators, geographic information system (GIS) mapping, and urban models, a baseline study was completed and expected outcomes were described and, where possible, validated in reality. The outcomes confirmed the stated hypothesis and showed that linking design, GIS mapping, and city data to transition management proved successful.

Bringing Transition Management to Cities: Building Skills for Transformative Urban Governance

“…Identifying the challenge or the opportunity: In this step, a sustainability challenge is identified or recognized that requires new ways of searching for solutions, and new ways of engaging with stakeholders. Another way to start the orienting phase is to recognize or anticipate an opportunity for a new orientation for city making, either at neighborhood or at city-wide level [32,41,42]. An opportunity can, for example, consist of a new framework that can offer an alternative view or perspective to a problem that is recognizable as persisting interventions or the opportunity to join a learning alliance or network with other cities to seek new tools, methods, approaches, or even inspiration for city making.…”

In-Between Nature: Reconsidering Design Practices for Territories In-Between from a Social-Ecological Perspective

“…The greater Rotterdam area is particularly suitable for this kind of study, because of its diffuse urban-rural boundary, the great abundance of in-between territories and the great urbanisation pressure on these areas. Although earlier studies and plans have addressed the densification of Rotterdam's inner-city area (Tillie 2018;Tillie et al 2018), Rotterdam now aims to build 50,000 new houses until 2040 of which most will be located in existing territories in-between (Gemeente Rotterdam 2019). As a result of the ongoing densification in these territories, the functions and services that they provide are under increasing pressure.…”

Human–River Encounter Sites: Looking for Harmony between Humans and Nature in Cities

“…Options such as the re-vegetation of previously wholly impervious surfaces, the construction of rain gardens around stormwater drains, the strategic restoration and construction of wetlands to increase overall infiltration capacity, and the use of natural wetland areas to temporarily store excess water during rains and floods are increasingly being considered by planners [76]. One example is the Green Roof Initiative in Rotterdam, Netherlands [77]. However, large-scale implementation of NBS is rare.…”