Liveable cities through urban design
Optimizing the quality of life in cities is a global topic within the internationally recognised scope of societal challenges. That is why mitigating measures are introduced in construction projects (whether or not required under the Environmental Impact Assessment procedure) to, among other things, moderate air quality, mitigate urban heat and minimise noise pollution.
However, the concrete implementation (and monitoring) of measures is very difficult, as a result of various bottlenecks in the market. Even more, the public awareness on the issues related to urban liveability and their impact on human health is increasing, resulting in an increased demand for rapid interventions, and a clear communication to the population.
The current project proposal fits within a series of research projects, which started with a doctoral research on spatial interventions for the optimization of air quality in cities (PhD D. Voordeckers under the supervision of Prof. M. Van Acker). Within this PhD, instruments were developed for monitoring, designing and analyzing measures to improve air quality. These instruments were identified through a fundamental market survey (within the framework of the next IOF POC proposal) as highly relevant for improving the implementation process of spatial measures for optimizing the quality of life in cities and in the vicinity of major traffic roads. The survey of various actors resulted in the detection of three major gaps in the market: (1) the lack of a knowledge partner to provide design support and to bridge the knowledge gap between engineering firms
and architects/urban planners; (2) the lack of monitoring of the quality of life in cities and the impact of measures and (3) the lack of a partner with overarching knowledge about the various aspects of quality of life (air quality, heat and noise) to support decision-making between different measures.
In order to respond to this market opportunity, the current project proposal (IOF-POC) focuses on the deeper, complex and practical development of the expertise, with the aim of establishing an Urban Liveability Platform (ULP) that can dynamically fill the market gaps. The platform bundles technical (CFD simulations and measurements) and design (design research) expertise, developed within a multidisciplinary team (SRP & DuEL), and uses this to act as a bridging partner between the expertise of engineering firms and spatial planners. On one hand, the project focuses on improving and broadening the expertise (in addition to air quality, also heat and noise) and centralizing this within one platform. On the other hand, a further commercial development is envisioned, in which the number of industrial contract agreements will be
expanded within the scope of this platform.