Full Professor Urban Design / Theory and Methods 0,8 1,0 FTE Profile Outline Department of Urbanism Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment TU Delft
Table of Contents 1. Introduction... 3 2. The Domain of the Chair... 3 3. Embedding... 5 Department... 5 TU Delft... 6 National... 6 International... 7 4. Tasks and responsibilities... 7 Research... 7 Education... 8 Valorisation... 8 Management... 8 5. Profile... 10 2
1. Introduction The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft is seeking a full professor for the Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods. The former professor, Han Meyer, vacated the position on 1 September 2016. The Chair is positioned in the Department of Urbanism. Urbanism is concerned with the planning and design of the urban environment and the complex relations between the physical form of cities and society. At TU Delft, we take an integrative approach to urbanism combining knowledge and research from design, the social and physical sciences, and engineering disciplines. This Dutch tradition emerged in the 1920s and was reinforced in Delft in the 1940s when the first professors of urbanism established a programme of research and education combining urban design and its creative methods of understanding cities, with urban planning and the methods of reasoning from the policy sciences. In the Department of Urbanism this approach is still clearly visible in the programme where the four sections of the department -- urban design, spatial planning, landscape architecture and environmental modelling, collaborate education and research projects. The integrative Dutch tradition of urbanism enjoys high international esteem in professional practice, research and education. The research and education agenda for Urbanism is responding to the challenge of great change in the forces that drive the creation and transformation of cities. In the context of highly dynamic and complex socioeconomic and political conditions, the body of knowledge and methods in urban design needs to be critically assessed and revised. The Chairholder will be able to build on a successful track record of research, education and collaborations with social partners. He or she will ensure continuity in the investigation of themes where the Department has a strong track record, and take the lead in identifying the critical future questions for urban design within the field of urbanism. The Chairholder will also play an important role in linking research with curriculum development and teaching at bachelor, master s and post-master levels; and will be expected to strengthen outreach to professional practice and societal partners. 2. The Domain of the Chair The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods is concerned with the design of the physical form of urban areas and the complex relationships between urban form and social processes. The profession of urban design seeks to shape urban form to achieve societal goals. It concentrates on the characteristics of the public realm - the network of spaces in towns and cities which structure urban life and interaction among citizens. The characteristics and qualities of space and place have a critical, if uncertain, relationship with the social, economic and cultural life of cities. For example, poorly designed public realm may create a feeling of insecurity and facilitate crime. The design of a place may enable encounter between people from different backgrounds, whereas another may segregate and inhibit interaction. These are critical issues for urban design that go well beyond the physical form of the city. The design of cities and neighbourhoods influences citizens access to amenities and opportunities with much contemporary urban development creating exclusive rather than inclusive environments. Urban designers must address their role in citizenship, democracy and the making 3
of more just and sustainable cities. For that reason, urban design must draw on a wide field of knowledge and conceptual tools including those from environmental technology, social science, spatial analysis and economic viability. However, our understanding of the relationships between urban form and urban life is limited. The principles of good urban form are widely circulated but hardly address the multiple complexity of city systems with their many interdependent and self-organising layers. Moreover, it is particularly difficult to devise universal principles and methods of urban design because the relationships between urban form and social processes are deeply rooted in particular places and cultures. There has been a major rethinking of the role of the urban designer and replacement of rigid universal formulas for designing cities. The approach at TU Delft in relation to these issues is laid down in a series of four Dutch books De Kern van de Stedenbouw (The Core of Urban Design) that are currently being revised and updated to be published as a single bilingual international book. That programme of work continues in the Department with an accent on meeting calls for sustainable, resilient and socially just cities using urban design approaches and methods that respect the actual complexity of city systems and fully engage with citizens. Other contextual changes call for a rethinking of theory and method in urban design. First, the object of urban design in brief: the city is changing rapidly: in the Netherlands and across the globe, complex urban regions are emerging. A whole range of systemic changes in relation to, for example, transport, water management, energy production and consumption but also the social composition of cities and urban regions means that the assumptions about the relations between urban form and social activity are becoming outdated. We understand cities as complex adaptive systems that comprise a multitude of dynamic interconnections and flows that adjust to each other irrespective of plans or designs. The effects of intervention are always uncertain because of the self-organising characteristic of cities. The general dynamics of transformation in cities has been known for some time, but there is still much to be done to inform practice and education in urbanism so that it can more effectively balance a degree of commitment or certainty in planning and design, with a responsive and adaptive approach that stimulates self-organisation and innovation to create more resilient outcomes. Second, the societal position of the urban designer and his or her knowledge base and skills has changed. An authoritative position of urban design and urban design knowledge and professional knowledge in general is no longer self-evident as is shown by the political and decision-making processes surrounding urban development projects. Various stakeholders and sometimes powerful private parties such as investors, housing corporations and civil society groups are much more involved in design and development bringing a much wider range of values into the process and challenging the professional ethics of urbanists. Urban design is engaging more with citizens and competing values in particpatory co-design processes. This means that a main task for the Chair is to strengthen our understanding of cities and how they change in the context of growing complexity and to transpose that understanding into practicable approaches that assist the urban design process. This requires selection of the critical theoretical developments that influence the field of urban design now and are likely to in the future; to separate the fundamental from the fleeting trends in theory; and to develop innovative methods that are relevant now and that anticipate likely future needs. The Chair will use an integrative approach, collaborating with other disciplines to expand the body of knowledge, 4
particularly to explore the long-term effects for society of urban design practice today. The Chair will take a critical view on what research paths can help the field of urban design to become better rooted in science and society. We recognise that theory and methods of urban design are historically and culturally rooted. The Professor will bring an international and cross-cultural perspective to bear on the subject but with attention to the Dutch approach to urbanism and its relevance in other cultural settings. 3. Embedding Department TU Delft is the leading institution in the Netherlands for research and education on urbanism and urban design. It has a track record of excellence in research, teaching and learning, confirmed in external research assessments. The Department of Urbanism is organised in four sections, each with one representative in the Daily Board of the Department. They are Environmental Modelling (spatial analysis and environmental technology), Landscape Architecture. Spatial Planning and Strategy, and Urban Design. The section Urban Design consists of the Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods and the Chair of Urban Design: Practice and Processes. There is also currently a Chair sponsored by the EFL Foundation and the Dutch Delta Programme. There is extensive collaboration within the Department between the sections and across the Faculty. The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods has particularly strong relations with various other Chairs through joint research projects and education. Spatial Planning and Strategy. The relationship between urban design and urban planning is a core requirement for the interdisciplinary approach at TU Delft. There is collaboration between the Urban Design and the Spatial Planning sections in research projects concerned with water management and flood risk, regional design, and international comparative aspects of urbanism, including joint PhD candidate supervision. Landscape Architecture. Collaboration between the Urban Design and Landscape Architecture sections is particularly strong on urbanisation in delta regions, which is the focus of numerous externally funded research projects and a successful education studio Delta Interventions. Environmental Technology and Design. Urbanism has a rapidly growing portfolio of research on the performance of urban systems or urban metabolism led by the Chair of Environmental Technology in collaboration with others, including Urban Design, on spatial quality and liveability of cities and urban regions. 3D GeoInformation. This Chair is a relatively recent addition to the Urbanism Department that with its leading research on the modelling of urban data offers great potential for understanding urban conditions and supporting the work of Urban Design. Collaboration is developing on the use of spatial data technologies in understanding the performance of the urban form of cities. Design as Politics. The Department has a strong commitment to a critical view of urbanism and urban design in shaping or reflecting power relations in the city which is the focus of the Chair of Design as Politics. 5
TU Delft Research on design is a shared topic within the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods cooperates in research projects, education and events with colleagues in the Departments of Architecture, Management in the Built Environment, and Architectural Engineering and Technology and OTB-Research for the Built Environment. Examples of collaboration are historical research on the building block with the chairs of Public Building, Methods and Analysis, Architecture Theory and History of Architecture and Urban Planning; and research on the relation between urban composition and contemporary urban challenges with the Chair of Urban Development Management. Outside the Faculty the Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods plays an important role in university-wide research groups, notably the Deltas, Infrastructure & Mobility Initiative (DIMI) and the Delft Global Initiative which seeks solutions to problems faced by developing countries. Delft Global sponsors a PhD candidate in the Urban Design Section who is also supported by links with the International New Towns Institute. There are also strong relations with the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG) and the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM), particularly on urban design for multifunctional flood defence. National Within the Netherlands the Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods participates in Strategic Alliance Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) a partnership of the three universities that develops joint research themes and education programmes building on their complementary strengths. The Chair is closely involved in the Department of Urbanism s contribution to the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) with the Municipality of Amsterdam, Wageningen University Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other partners. Other national collaborations include the 4TU: the four universities of technology in the Netherlands (Delft, Eindhoven, Twente and Wageningen); strong collaboration with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment and other partners such as the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). The Chair reaches out also to many industry partners in professional offices of urban design and urbanism. International The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods has had a very high international profile with research and social partners in many other countries. The Chairholder will maintain and strengthen these links building on the strong collaborations that already exist. In education, the Chair plays an important part in the programme of the European Post-Master in Urbanism (EMU) which is a collaborative venture of KU Leuven, UPC Barcelona and Università IUAV di Venezia. The Department of Urbanism plays a central role in the TU Delft-wide Joint Research Centre on Urban Systems and Environment with South China University of Technology Guangzhou. The Urban Design Section has made a significant contribution, including contributions to joint research proposals, and the appointment and supervision of dual PhD degree candidates who are supervised both in Delft and Guangzhou. The Department of Urbanism was a founding member of the International Forum on Urbanism (IF0U) with partners including the National University of Singapore, Tongji University and Tsinghua University. The Urban Design Section has played an important role in the initiative, and deeper collaboration is expected in light of the successful expansion of IFOU. The Chair has also been actively involved in the IDEA 6
League (TU Delft together with ETH Zürich, RWTH Aachen, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg and University Politecnico di Milano) including the organisation of a successful PhD school. 4. Tasks and responsibilities Research Urbanism research at TU Delft reflects the long-standing Dutch tradition that combines urban design and its creative methods of exploration and understanding with the social and natural sciences and their methods of scientific reasoning. We have added more recently knowledge of technologies in measuring and modelling the performance of cities from environmental technology and geoinformation. The central domain of the Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods is the design and analysis of urban patterns at different scales. Changing conditions in cities result in increasing complexity of the structure, character, development and use of urban areas as well as new societal demands on the urban design profession. The scientific aim is to strengthen urban design as a technical-scientific discipline with the development of well-founded principles, methods, and tools to develop innovative approaches for urban analysis and urban design. Within TU Delft, research of international quality and reputation has been conducted in analytical and typological design research, and inquiry by design, consisting of speculative projections and evaluations. Further development and strengthening of these methods is desirable to contribute to development of the discipline. Over recent years, research has concentrated on questions of (re)designing the urban fabric so as to contribute to improving the sustainability, vitality and resilience of cities; the interaction of the physical and intangible socio-economic and cultural structures of cities; the use of patterns and scenarios to support and structure design processes in multi-actor settings; and the creation of design tools that may improve practice and education. The Chairholder will review the current portfolio of research projects from their understanding of contemporary debates in city form and urban design methods and propose a short list of scientifically and socially relevant research questions. The agenda will provide continuity with previous work in the general context of the Dutch approach, and build on this platform, whilst inputs giving more focus and direction for research. He or she is expected to build and lead teams that will make large-scale multidisciplinary collaborative research funding proposals. This role involves extensive collaboration with other disciplines in the University. This includes sharing expertise and ideas within the team and coaching of less experienced members of staff. The Department of Urbanism has a large body of PhD candidates. We have made good progress in ensuring efficient and timely completion of PhD dissertations in collaboration with the Graduate School, and in finding external funding to support PhD research training. The Chair will play an important part in the selection, monitoring and promotion of PhD candidates in the field and is expected to play a major role in maintain the improvement of the PhD track record of the department as a whole. 7
Education The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods is highly involved in the education programme of the Faculty. In recent years, the Department has made good progress in linking the research programme of the Department with master s and post-master s education, for example in connecting large externally funded research projects to master s studios. The Chair will continue to strengthen the link between research and education. S/he will also contribute to the Bachelor 'Bouwkunde', the Master track Urbanism, and the European Post-Master in Urbanism (EMU). The Chair is expected to take a leading role in curriculum development, in particular concerning the contribution of urban design theory and methods. The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has one Bachelor track in which all disciplines of the Faculty are represented. In the programme, technology, theory and design are combined. The education is focused on students learning to analyse and design complex projects in a clear and structured way, with a creative and academic approach. The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods is currently represented in the modules Fundamentals 2, 3 and 4 ('Grondslagen' 2, 3 and 4) in the first and second year, and in the third design project ('Ontwerpen' 3) in the second year and this will continue. The master track Urbanism is part of the Master of Science programme in Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences. The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods has played a key role in the programme of the track, especially in the research and design studio in the first quarter (Analysis and Design of Urban Form) and in the courses History and Theory of Urbanism; Research and Design Methodology for Urbanism; and Theory of Urbanism. The Chair also plays an important role in the European Post-Master in Urbanism (EMU) and it is important that this continues. The EMU is very much a collaborative venture of the whole Department that sets a challenging curriculum demanding that graduates are able to successfully demonstrate they can combine theoretical knowledge, research methods and urban design practice in their work. The Department is keen to develop high-level short-course professional education at the post-master level. The Chairholder will contribute to these developments making use initially of elements existing post-master courses. The Chair will also contribute to online education and its blending with traditional methods. The Department has only recently engaged with e-learning but with some success. Valorisation The Chair will contribute to the dissemination of academic knowledge about urbanism in general and urban design in particular among policy makers and the general public, and will help to expand the international academic visibility of urban design research. Urban design scholarship lends itself particularly well to policy and real world applications, thereby interlinking academic research and societal concerns. One way in which the Chair will engage with the outside is through the editorship of journals and book series. The Chair is expected to take a leading role in publication, leading by example, and stimulate and support colleagues strongly in their writing of papers and grant proposals. Management The Chair will make a substantial contribution to the management of the Department and where needed the Faculty. This means the Chair will take a leadership role: providing direction for research and education in collaboration with the management teams; setting a vision and objectives in an open and inclusive way; 8
communicating and sharing goals and key priorities; supporting staff members to contribute to shared objectives by building academic competences; widely promoting the work of the Department, Faculty and individuals; and reviewing performance in both academic and financial terms. He or she will have a particular role in advising and supporting section and departmental colleagues on the development of research ideas in the context of the academic debates about urbanism, demands from social partners and shifting research funding priorities. The Chair will also assist in reviewing and strengthening management practices in the Section and Department so as to meet changing demands, in particular the increasing number of externally funded research projects. The Chair takes the lead on the contribution of the section to joint research proposals and collaborates on managing curriculum development and education workload planning. The emphasis of the Chair is on the further development of the successful Urbanism Research Programme which requires active and constructive cooperation with the various research leaders within the programme. A special task is to stimulate the continued acquisition of research funding through national science organisations (such as NWO and STW), prestigious European or other research funding institutions (such as Horizon 2020), that allows for a full focus on academic research. The Chair will help to strengthen relationships with other blue chip international funding and sponsoring bodies with a particular interest in urbanisation issues, including the World Bank and UN Habitat. The Chair will take an active role in the recruitment and supervision of PhD candidates and post-doctoral researchers. There is a particular role to play in developing doctoral research in urban design topics that produces researchers competent in research methodologies which encompass design as a method of investigation alongside social and natural science methods. The Urban Design: Theory and Methods Chair is part of the Urban Design Section, which consists of: three full professors (2.0 FTE) three associate professors two assistant professors (4.1 FTE) six teachers (4.9 FTE) six researchers (2.4 FTE). Currently the Chair comprises one assistant professor, six teachers, one student assistant and nine PhD candidates, most of whom are external. In the section, there are two professors with a tenured position. They share tasks within the section concerning organisational matters (management chairs) and representing the section in research- and education meetings. The professor of Urban Design: Theory and Methods represents the section in the Daily Board (Executive Committee) of the Department of Urbanism. The professor will be available for committees at the Faculty level. 9
5. Profile The Chair of Urban Design: Theory and Methods will demonstrate: a distinguished career in urbanism built on an academic education in urban design, urban planning or other relevant subject; a doctoral degree (or exceptionally, an equivalent academic record supported with academic publication); excellence in research as shown by acquisition of research grants and publications; successful experience in Phd candidate supervision; competence in the professional practice of urban design; active national and international network of professional and academic contacts; visibility in professional and societal debates on urban design; outstanding record of teaching and learning at master s and bachelor level; experience in curriculum development and in connecting research and education; experience of collaboration across urban professions such as architecture, urban planning, landscape architecture, or others; leadership through managing change, team-building and collaborative working, and tactful interpersonal skills; outstanding spoken and written communication skills in English, particularly the ability to communicate complex ideas clearly to students and external partners, and (if necessary), a willingness to learn Dutch within a reasonable timespan. The professor of Urban Design: Theory and Methods will receive an appointment of 0.8 to 1.0 FTE for a period of initially five years. 10