“Through research and education, I aim to contribute to the sustainable transition of existing cities, anticipating key societal urban agendas, local spatial identity and systemic innovation processes.”

Pieter van Wesemael is professor of Urbanism and Urban Architecture (UUA) at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).

The chair understands the modern discipline of urbanism both as a systems-based transition science and a transformative, reform-oriented professional practice. In other words, we study and shape how cities evolve to meet critical and systemic environmental, social, and economic challenges - focusing especially on adapting existing urban areas through socio-technical innovations.

We explore urban form as the material expression of urban socio-ecological systems where interdependent scales - building typologies, blocks, neighborhoods, and regions - and social, economic and environmental systems influence one another over time in a historical evolution with their own logics and path dependencies.

Our research draws on theories of urban change and morphogenesis, innovation- and transition studies, as well as behavioral and social sciences to understand how social, economic, and technological drivers shape urban governance frameworks and translate into spatial change and form.

Methodologically, researchers in the chair employ mixed methods approaches, including in-depth qualitative and ethnographic approaches, public life surveys and observational methods, statistical modeling and GIS, simulations and VR experiments. They use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, making extensively use of the new possibilities of digital technologies.

These urgent systemic challenges playing out in cities in the Global North and the Netherlands in general, are especially pressing in booming regions such as the Metropolitan Region Eindhoven (MRE). Challenges on fundamental transitions towards more affordable housing, sustainable transport, renewable energy, circular food, and resilient economic systems, to mention a few, play out more urgently in these regions. Moreover, MRE benefits from a strong eco-system of quadruple helix governance, positioning itself as a region dedicated to developing innovative solution pathways to (trans)form the urban living environment in such a way that these challenges of sustainable urban development are met in the interest of society at large and future generations.

The UUA chair has therefore developed extensive and structural collaborations with stakeholders and shareholders in the MRE to address these challenges, bridging teaching and research into innovative pathways with sustainable and beneficial societal impact. The group works on a broad spectrum of topics through collaborative long-term programs ranging from healthy cities, inclusive cities, and circular cities to historical cities. Touching on topics like active lifestyle and active environment design, housing cultures and neighborhood design, climate change and public space and urban green infrastructure design, new economies and historical urban landscape design. While these studies are rooted in the region as the base for empirical research, they are strongly linked to more general (inter)national academic and research networks, consortia, projects and other academic venues.

The chair shapes these collaborations through a combination of challenge-based learning, action field research and learning organizations. In teaching, this is organized through the Urban Lab programs, while in research, it is conducted through the Urban Development Initiative (UDI) programs. In the Urban Lab, students and staff collaborate with real-world actors in a real-world setting on real-world challenges. In our research, staff works with PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers within both UDI and (inter)national research consortia on the same real world urban challenges.

The current research agenda of the UUA chair focuses on four clusters:

1) Healthy Cities: active lifestyle, active environment design and public space design.

2) Nature-inclusive Cities: urban metabolism, transition - and systems-thinking.

3) Inclusive Cities: housing, participatory urbanism and place making.

4) Resilient Cities: evolutionary urbanism, cultural heritage, place identity and contextual design.

Pieter received his Masters with honors (cum laude) at the Delft University of Technology, where he also did his PhD (“Architecture of Instruction and Delight”) with honors. For two decades, he was partner in the Architekten Cie and INBO, both in Amsterdam, leading the consultancy and design department in urban design, area development and spatial policy. He has published widely on topics related to sustainable evolutionary urban development, based on a contextual and systemic understanding of its inherent path dependencies.

He is responsible for bachelor and master courses, seminars and studios on urbanism and urban architecture. In the bachelor, Pieter teaches the courses on Architecture and the City, the USE line on sustainable urban development, Urban Case Studies and Landscape and Public Space. In the master he teaches in the courses Public Domain, Urban Planet and Urban Trends. He is also  involved in graduation studios for the urbanism track as well as selected master seminars and a member of several boards on spatial planning, healthy cities, smart cities and cultural heritage.

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