Involded in (Current & Past Projects)
Circular area development 
Cities and the urban economy both depend heavily on natural resources and contribute to the depletion of those. In the process of building our cities, we need to transform our approaches by using circular materials and reducing our energy and material consumption. This way we can shift towards a circular urban economy.
The challenges of a circular urban economy are manifold, and the ‘LDE Cities & Regions’ can tap into various existing initiatives to provide access to knowledge about various dimensions including circular building, circular consumption, circular mobility, etc. An example is the work on the Circular Built Environment that is carried out by a TU Delft based network of researchers. Our projects and activities seek inspiration in work from international organizations including the Ellen Mc Arthur foundation.
Cities & Regions Initiatives
Interdisciplinary Thesis Labs
A yearly programme for students of Erasmus University, TU Delft and Leiden University that tackles current challenges in the Built Environment focussing on Cities & Regions. The programme is organised by LDE and supported by a variety of partners concerned and involved with the central topic of each year.
Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab 2024: Just and Sustainable Landscape Transformation
Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab 2023: Circular Building and Area Development
Interdisciplinary Thesis Lab 2022: Circular Building Materials and (re)Manufacturing Hub
Master City Developer
Partner in professional education on area development via the Master City Developer, including aspects of sustainability and circularity.
Doughnut Economy 
The concept of the Doughnut Economy is developed by Kate Raworth. She presents this concept in her book Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist (2017). The Doughnut Economy re-conceptualizes our understanding ‘economy’. It prioritizes the need to operate our economy within a zone that respects a social minimum and the planetary boundaries.
The urban sustainability challenges in the Zuid-Holland region are very complex, urgent and intertwined with other areas and sectors. The province of Zuid Holland embraced the concept of ‘Brede Welvaart’, but is that radical enough?
Cities & Regions initiative
The Doughnut for the Zuid Holland region
This initiative is structured around a group of researchers that have the ambition to make impact with transdisciplinary research. While the focus is on Zuid-Holland, this initiative explicitly places Zuid-Holland and the (relevance of the) Doughnut in a trans-local and international perspective. An underlying research question is: ‘How citizen initiatives can be meaningfully and sustainably engaged in participatory research about the Doughnut Economy in Zuid Holland?’
Moreover, we are collaborating with the Resilient Delta Initiative to further develop this research project. Please get in touch if you want to join, or have ideas for this research initiative.
Place-based & transdisciplinarity 
Sustainability challenges have a strong spatial dimension and sustainability transformations are also spatial transformation. In Zuid Holland there are several spatial transformation processes ongoing including: energy transition, addressing the housing shortage, circular economy transition and the landscape transition towards a more sustainable rural and regional land use.
Within our focus on cities & regions we have engaged in several research projects that seek to explore the potential of place-based approaches to guide spatial transformation processes. We partner with the Resilient Delta Initiative in research around the ‘integration potential’ of place-based approaches and with the LDE Universities, ACCEZ, the Province of Zuid-Holland, Wageningen University, Hogeschool InHolland and the Haagsche Hogeschool we carry out an action research project and a thesis lab around place-based approaches for guiding sustainable and just landscape transformations.