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This book discusses a spectrum of approaches to designing the food-energy-water nexus at different spatial-urban scales. The book offers a framework for working on the FEW-nexus in a design-led context and integrates the design of urban neighbourhoods and regions with methodologies how to simultaneously engaging residents and stakeholders and evaluating the propositions in a FEW-print, measuring the environmental impact of the different designs. The examples are derived from on the ground practices in Sydney, Tokyo, Detroit, Amsterdam and Belfast.

Chapter 1 Designing the Sustainable City -- Chapter 2 The Role of Indigenous Paradigms and Traditional Knowledge Systems in Modern Humanity's Sustainability Quest – Future foundations from past knowledge -- Chapter 3 Born, not made: designing the productive city -- Chapter 4 A new model for place development – bringing together regenerative and placemaking processes -- Chapter 5 The key role of systems thinking in sustainable architecture -- Chapter 6 Liveable Green Cities; integrating climate adaptive solutions and circular economy into the built environment -- Chapter 7 Post-earthquake recovery in Nepal: A study and analysis of post disaster perception and needs for housing recovery after 2015 earthquake -- Chapter 8 Tackling urban open space encroachment in a South African township: an exploratory study -- Chapter 9 The role of smart city initiatives in driving partnerships: A case study of the Smart Social Spaces Project, Sydney Australia -- Chapter 10 Fostering successful smart campus transitions through consensus-building: a university of technology case study -- Chapter 11 The role of landscape architectural designers in landscape construction health and safety -- Chapter 12 Sustainability, ReciproCity, Radicality -- Index.

This book emphasizes new ways of designing for a sustainable city and urban environment. From several angles the future of our urbanism is illuminated. From a philosophical point of view, the city is seen as an organism, following complex ecosystemic principles, shining light on Indigenous perspectives to become beneficial for sustainable design and core questions are asked whether current architectural practice is really sustainable. Simultaneously concrete practices are presented for cities in transformation, focusing on green infrastructure, smart city principles and health.

This book is oriented on cities and their role in society, from the public places created in cities to the visionary and more abstract views on large scale developments. The chapter authors argue, each in their own way, how urban design can produce an answer to these questions. Furthermore, detailed insights are given into how current designers, architects, urbanists and landscape architects deal with the contemporary urban problems of our time: climate change, migration, resiliency, politics, environmental change.

In two volumes, selected papers presented at the sixth AESOP conference on Sustainable Food Planning are brought together, representing the academic work of worldwide experts in the fields of food planning and urban agriculture. This volume, therefore, provides an overview of the latest, state-of-the-art research in the field, drawing from areas such as spatial planning, urban design, governance, social innovation, entrepreneurship, and local initiatives, among others, to represent the current knowledge base for creating sustainable urban food projects.

This book was written to support community involvement in the design process, to help prevent negative outcomes that can result from a top-down design approach. The combination of community involvement and design is, at least in literature, not very extensive. Although much has been written about stakeholder involvement, this is often not directly related to design processes, which - most importantly - deprives community members of the opportunity to design their desired future themselves. The Design Charrette: Ways to Envision Sustainable Futures provides a theoretical foundation establishing the benefits of organizing a design charrette for community-based planning, supported by many practical examples. The book includes sections on collaborative learning, practical guidance, theory and case studies in many different contexts: long and short charrettes, urban and rural subjects, and Dutch, Chinese, Australian, Indian and European examples. Part I: General Theory offers a detailed overview of the charrette process, a chapter on innovations in organizational and community learning and a chapter on shifting paradigms in the design charrette. Part II presents a number of case studies, including the INternational Conference on Renewable Energy Approaches for the Spatial Environment (INCREASE); charrettes accomplished in two days in the communities of Sea Lake and Bendigo in Australia; a chapter on lessons for the future, describing rural participatory design in Rajasthan, India; a description of learning by practice in a high-pressure student atelier; a chapter entitled Design Charrettes for Sustainable Building in China and more. The Design Charrette challenges the conventional wisdom that good design by itself will bring about the benefits the designer envisions. By demonstrating and analyzing the effectiveness of design charrettes in personal development and learning, and as a way to share desired future pathways, the book benefits everyone who may be leading, considering or participating in a design charrette

This book shows that the problem of climate adaptation, which is described in social planning terms as 'wicked,' is at odds with the contemporary practice of spatial planning. The author proposes a new adjusted framework which is more adaptable to unpredictable, wicked, dynamic and non-linear processes. The inspiration for this new method is the behaviour of swarms: bees, ants, birds and fish are capable of self-organization, which enables the system to become less vulnerable to sudden environmental changes. The framework proposed in Swarm Planning consists of these four elements: Two levels of complexity, the first being the whole system and the second its individual components. Each of these has different attributes for adapting to change. Five layers, consisting of networks, focal points, unplanned space, natural resources and emerging occupation patterns. Each layer has its own spatial dynamic, and each is connected to a spatial scale. Non-linear processes, which emerge in different parts of the framework and include emerging patterns, connectedness and tipping points among others. Two planning processes; the first, 'from small to large' works upward from the slowest changing elements to more rapidly-changing ones. The second, 'on the list of partners' addresses each layer from networks through emerging occupation patterns. Swarm Planning applies this framework to a series of pilot studies, and appraises its performance using criteria for an adaptive landscape. The results show that the use of the Swarm Planning Framework reduces the vulnerability of landscapes as well as the impact of climate hazards and disasters, improves response to unexpected hazards and contains adaptation strategies. "This book is a must for planners in government and the private sector as it outlines the concept, strategies and techniques for swarm planning. It is also an important guide for policymakers looking to engage communities in a dialogue about the adaptation planning process." Professor John Martin, La Trobe University "The ultimate value of the book lies in encouraging the planning community to consider options that go far beyond those offered by business-as-usual planning methodologies developed for a set of operating conditions that are fast becoming obsolete. As such it makes an important and much needed contribution to the field." Assistant Professor Dr. Chrisna du Plessis, University of Pretoria

This book advocates a fresh approach to planning that anticipates, rather than reacts to, the changes in climate currently in process. Today's spatial planning procedures rely on historical evidence instead of preparing for factors that by definition lie in the future, yet which are relatively uncontroversial: shortages of water, sea level rise and rises in average temperatures being but three examples. Arguing for more flexibility, the contributors view 'complexity' as the key to transforming the way we plan in order to better equip us to face uncertainties about our future environment.

Current decision-making regarding urban design, architecture, and spatial planning oftenemphasizes existing power balances, which historically have excluded other humans, such asindigenous people, and nature from conversations and decision-making. The purpose of this studyis to explore if and how an empathic experience could give insights into how nature can be givena voice, and, more concretely, how a group of trees on the TEC campus in Monterrey would feelabout a sudden change in their direct environment. The methodology is divided into three parts.The first is the explanation of the case study and immersion of the (human) participants in the site.The second stage consists of deep listening and reproducing the imagined expressions of the trees.In the third stage, the participants return from the site, evaluate, and formulate a manifesto. Theexperience suggests that it is possible to inspire human beings to imagine what trees would have tosay if we only imagined their language. It also shows that it is possible to gain access to a formerlyhidden environment. The conclusion is that the empathic access to these formerly muted worlds,such as those of nature or socially marginalized peoples, can strengthen our understanding of, andour ability to resolve, the current environmental crisis.

The current paradigm for planning an energy transition is often embedded in practices within the existing political and societal regime. Within this paradigm, a genuine transformation to a fully fossil-free future is often not achieved. Thus, the problem is that in order to arrive at such a newly conceived future, the concepts and solutions created need to be fundamentally different from practices in recent past and present. At the same time, the community is not prepared for big changes, and the unknown future is experienced as uncertain and undesirable. These two mechanisms perpetuate current practices and prevent a new future from emerging. In this article, we will demonstrate how these two movements can be connected to disrupt incremental and path-dependent development, allowing people to become visionary and co-design a transformative future with innovative concepts. The Dutch Groningen region is used as an illustrative example for realising fundamental shifts supported by a bottom-up engagement process.

The design of cities has long ignored the flows that shape the city. Water has been the most visible one, but energy and materials were invisible and/or taken for granted. A little over 50 years ago, Abel Wolman was the first to illuminate the role of water flows in the urban fabric. It has long been a search for quantitative data while the flows were mostly seen as separated entities. The fact they invisibly formed the way the city appears has been neglected for many years. In this thematic issue the "city of flows" is seen as a design task. It aims to bring to the fore the role flows can play to be consciously used to make spatial decisions in how and where certain uses and infrastructure is located. Efficient and sustainable.

In this article three different responses are taken as the starting point how different types of disruption could be dealt with. These responses -repair, bounce back and grow stronger- are combined with three disruptions (sea level rise, storm surge and heavy rainfall), and then tested in three case studies. The result of the investigation is that anti-fragility (grow stronger) is a preferential approach to create delta landscapes that become stronger under influence of a disruption. Anti-fragility is for this research subdivided in three main characteristics, abundance of networks, adaptivity and counterintuitivity, which are used to analyse the three case study propositions. The type of response, type of disruption, characteristic of anti-fragility and the qualities of the case study area itself determine the design proposition and the outcome. In all cases this approach has led to a stronger and safer landscape. The concept of anti-fragility impacts on the period before a disruption, during and also after the disruptive impact. This gives it a better point of departure in dealing with uncertain or unprecedented hazards and disruptions.