SUSTAINABLE TRANFORMATION OF CITIES: THE CASE OF EINDHOVEN, THE NETHERLANDS

misbe2011 Tracking Number 14

Keywords: Urban form, Sustainable Cities, Urban transformation, Pragmatics In Western Europe, the question of sustainable urban development is, to a large extent, linked to the issue of urban transformation, given that growth rates and urban expansion in European context is in general limited. The challenge is to make use of the ongoing transformation processes to come to more sustainable urban development. Hildebrand Frey is the main protagonist of the ‘urban cell theory’ (UCT), a theory that emphasizes pragmatism and focuses on the redesign of the existing cities, through promoting the concept of urban and suburban cores, laying down important arguments for neighborhood borders and neighborhood centers. In short, H. Frey advocates a recalibration of urban components to a higher level of aggregation –urban cells or modules- that might be instrumental to achieve a balanced relationship among transport, urban form and environment; thus a more sustainable city. Urban cells are units on the level of the urban district that establish key criteria for each component of sustainability in the city, categorized into planning, design, environment, social and economic key criteria. Therefore, to meet the objectives of a sustainable city, new methods, strategies and design tools are required as part of a pragmatics-based integrated planning. For decisions to pursue the sustainability path, the pragmatic method will be a practical tool in bringing sustainable considerations to bear in the realm of project decisions, considering each factor converging in the physical, social and economical necessities of a community, connecting them to the environment. This paper examines the sustainable transformation of the cities upon making a re-mapping of the existing city to identify the potential urban cells, restructuring of the actual city of districts and neighborhoods –including satellite settlements if relevant- and thus obtaining a principal layer of the map of the sustainable city. The presentation focuses on Eindhoven, specifically the District of Woensel as a case study, describing the operationalization of the UCT, to obtain new directions towards the sustainable development of the cities, focusing on the criteria of UCT as a conceptual framework. This work is structured in three parts: 1- a preliminary analysis identifying the existing neighborhoods on the district to analyze how the existing parts of the city meet the criteria of UCT, establishing thus potential and non-potential sustainable areas of the existing city under evaluation of the UCT criteria; 2- the description of how to join non-potential and potential sustainable areas of existing city to create “large units of neighborhoods”, making a balance of them, to improve non-potential parts by joining them with the potential areas; 3- the elaboration of results indicating that all the parts of the city are part of potential sustainable areas, obtaining hence a principal layer of the map of the sustainable city: by the interaction among non-potential and potential sustainable neighborhoods; laying down new districts with new borders, main avenues and connections, and district centers if required. The relevance of this approach is to contribute new insights to the debate of sustainable city borders. These insights –referred to methods to redesign the cities- will deliver a new direction to achieve sustainability in the city. References: Barton, H. (2000) Sustainable Communities, the Potential of Eco-Neighborhoods. Ecological planning, sustainable building. London: earthscan, 305 pp. Frey, H. (1999) Designing the city: Towards a more sustainable urban form. London: spon, 148 pp. Frey, H. Yaneske, P. (2007) Visions of Sustainability, Cities and Regions. Taylor & Francis group, 132 pp. Moore, S. (2010) Pragmatic Sustainability, theoretical and practical tools. Routledge, Taylor & Francis group, London and New York, 290 pp.