2.0. Contact Information

• An inventory of actors and organisations aims at a positioning of development strategies in an institutional context. Which actors agree and disagree on intended development? What are their resources and capacities to enhance or obstruct change? How does a design relate to their existing plans and policies?

Objectives

This regional design quarter has a variety of educational objectives. Objectives are based on the fi nal attainment levels of the MSc Urbanism programme at the Delft University of Technology. The following exit qualifi cations have been designated to the quarter: • Ability to convert a programme into a design. • Insight into the origin of location patterns. • Ability to relate the development of a concept to human relationship patterns and standards. • Skills in urban design and planning research in project preparation. • Ability in urban analysis, planning and design. • Ability to evaluate designs against norms and regulations with respect to form, function, implementation, development costs and the environment. • Knowledge of the organization, resources and tools of spatial planning. • Oral, written and graphic presentation skills. • Insight into decision-making procedures and processes. • Ability to defi ne and formulate an assignment, based on a well-funded analysis and ambition.

Assessment

Students work in groups of 4-5 on a regional design. Their products (a vision and development strategy) demonstrate that students can: 28 URBANISM • Understand the complexity, multiscalarity and uncertainty of regional spatial development; can consider the limitations that these conditions set to regional planning and design. • Explain the ethical issues involved in the activity of planning and designing for people. • Formulate and argue for a comprehensive regional vision, drawing on commonly shared values and norms, evident regional spatial development and appropriate planning principles. • Understand the basic roles and instruments of strategic spatial planning in delivering public good, spatial quality and equality and sustainable regional spatial development. • Justify a vision and development strategy conceptually, making use of theoretical notions and an understanding of how theory and practice interact. • Convert a vision into a regional development strategy that is relevant and feasible in a given institutional context and robust in respect to uncertainties of long-term regional development; can estimate a fair distribution of costs and benefi ts among stakeholders involved. • Use communication media that are eff ective in collaborative decision-making (visualize design proposals clearly, consistently and persuasively, using images and text); can engage in critical debate. • Understand and critically refl ect on roles and impacts of regional design in/on inclusive planning decision-making.

Formats

The vision and development strategy are presented in various formats of deliverables: 1. Oral presentations: midterm and fi nal presentation. 2. Final report: this is a shared product be-

tween the R&D studio and the course Research & Design Methodology for Urbanism, assessed with diff erent criteria. The fi nal report will be used in online exhibition after the quarter fi nishes. 3. An individual refl ection (500 words): It is written by individual students. Writing describes and evaluates the regional design process by the group in the studio. The refl ection makes use of knowledge gained during the SDS lecture/workshop series and the series Capita Selecta. This individual refl ection will be placed in the appendix of the fi nal report.

Assessment strategy for studio work*

The assignment of the studio is based on group work. However, the assessment will also consider individual performance. The grade for studio work includes these parts: • Vision: group grade, counts for 40%, • Strategy: group grade, counts for 30%, • Group performance: debating and presentation skills, spatial visualisation, counts for 10%, • Individual performance: refl ection on the regional design process and individual performance in team work (peer review will be used as a tool for assessing the performance of students in team work): 20%.

* See the rubric on brightspace for assessment criteria

2.1.5 SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES (SDS)

This course element provides theories and methods of regional analysis, planning and design, focusing on strategic spatial development strategies steering city regions towards sustainable future scenarios. It provides knowledge and skills for students to conduct regional design, and students are required to actively apply what they have learned from the SDS sessions to their studio work.

Cities and regions are in complex processes of transformation, facing opportunities and challenges brought by on-going trends of economic globalization, migration, climate change, energy transition, and so on. In the light of sustainable development, visions and strategies are needed for regional planning and design, to promote positive changes to city regions involving the public sectors, the private sectors and the civil society, linking social, economic and environmental factors through scales. Coping with such complexity of a region in the R&D studio in one quarter’s time is a challenging task. The SDS sessions, in combination with studio tutorials, will help students overcome this challenge and understand strategic planning approaches. Besides, these sessions will guide the work fl ow in the R&D studio: What are the ongoing trends and issues at hand? How to analyse/interpret the regional spatial structure and the fl ows of people and materials? What are the more desirable future scenarios and how do they look like? What are the regional strategies that could direct transformation processes towards these scenarios, seeing the unintended outcome of deliberate actions by individuals and agencies? How to formulate spatial policies and strategic projects in line with such regional strategies?