MSc Urbanism graduation students have the opportunity to participate in ongoing reserach projects of the Randstad research group. One of these projects is the PICH project which investigates the impact of urban planning and governance reform on the historic built environment and intangible cultural heritage.
The PICH project aims to develop the state of the art on the impact of planning and governance reforms on the management of the urban cultural heritage in the context of four case study countries (NL, UK, IT, NO). In particular, the project will be able to explain changes in the management of the urban cultural heritage and more explicitly the relation between the planning and management of the tangible heritage to the intangible sense of place.
The central objective of this project is to understand how reforms in urban governance and planning are affecting the management of the cultural heritage and what are the consequences of governance reform for the historic urban environment and the their intangible values. At last it explains how practice can respond most effectively to promote more sustainable management of the cultural heritage. The PICH project will provide a platform where academic, government and civil society partners can explore and share knowledge about these processes, learn about both good and bad experiences under very different conditions, and understand the potential for transferability of solutions.
The research objectives are concerned with complex relationships and processes within planning and governance institutions and the interplay with citizens’ understandings of place. These objectives demand a case study approach involving a range of data collection and analysis methods. Each of the four partners (TU Delft, Newcastle University, Università Iuav di Venezia & Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will investigate three case studies in the following thematic lines: the historic urban core, industrial areas facing transformation, and urban landscapes. TU Delft’s team includes Prof. Vincent Nadin, Wout v/d Toorn Vrijthoff, Dr. Azadeh Arjomand Kermani and Dr. Nikki Brand. They are investigating three following case studies: the Nieuwe Mark in Breda as historic urban core, RDM campus in Rotterdam as an industrial heritage site and Dutch waterline as landscape heritage.
Planning Complex Cities TU Delft 