Cities must adapt to cope with climate change impacts such as higher temperatures and periods of heat stress. Trees are widely accepted as natural 'aircon' for our cities, but precise data on how much they cool - and in particular over their life cycle - is lacking. In the project i-Tree 2.0-NL, accurate metrics for urban trees in Dutch cities will be developed and translated into databases, application software and 'orgware'.

The Zuiderwaterlinie (Southern Water Line) is one of the oldest and longest water defence lines in The Netherlands. The line connects Bergen op Zoom to Grave. The line has a long history with specific stories of war and peace from the past until now. In the past academic year, students made plans to develop this military heritage for the future. The purpose of the student plans is to show what possibilities the Zuiderwaterlinie offers for the future of Noord-Brabant.

Justice is a crucial dimension for sustainable cities and communities. Recent systemic shocks including climate change, the pandemic, a general erosion of democratic norms and more have prompted a rethinking and conceptualisation of the Just City in this light. A Manifesto for the Just City includes texts by a number of guest authors and 43 manifestos written by students from 25 universities around the world.

Wind turbulence in an office district, noise nuisance from an industrial park, horizon-polluting windmills near a residential area, blinding light in classrooms. Often unexpected, such things can range from being a nuisance to highly annoying after a construction has been completed. We can now more easily simulate these effects on the living environment before construction, as detailed 3D data is now available for all 10 million buildings in the Netherlands.

Worldwide, levels of socio-economic segregation in cities are increasing and as a result the rich and the poor are increasingly living in different parts of urban regions. In a new book researchers Maarten van Ham and colleagues explain the relationship between increasing levels of inequality and segregation.

The Netherlands has been world-renowned for decades as one of the leading countries when it comes to knowledge of flood risk management and spatial planning. “Our strategy of connecting both themes and adopting a cohesive view of them has received widespread praise. But in recent years, we appear to have lost that connection in the Netherlands; our tradition of managing spatial planning at the state level has been abandoned,” says Chris Zevenbergen who has been part-time professor of Delta Urbanism in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment since February.

Machiel van Dorst has been working in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment for over twenty years. In his role as head of the Urbanism department, and more recently vice-dean, he has invested a lot of time in the faculty. But teaching and research remained his passion, and have once more become the main focus of his career. “The interaction between environment, behaviour, urban and landscape design is the main focus of my teaching and research remit.”

GeoFluxus, a spin-off from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment wins the 1st price at the EU DATATHON Green Deal Challenge. This competition invites teams from all over the world to create applications for European open datasets to solve one of the four main challenges the continent is facing.

More than half of the world's population is agglomerated in cities. According to a UN projection, approx. two thirds of the global population will be city dwellers by 2050.