Buildings, cities, and regions shape the way we live. Well-planned and designed urban areas help communities thrive, and therefore urban planners and designers can make a real difference for people today as well as future generations.

At the UUA Chair, we focus on the future of cities: how to plan, design, and transform them to address the urgent challenges facing today’s urbanizing world. Our work bridges urban planning and design, from regional planning to public space design and building ensembles, and is grounded in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theories and methods from the fields of urbanism, critical urban studies, as well as futuring, innovation, and transition studies.

“We focus on the (trans)formation of cities and their architecture, anticipating systemic changes in society, economy, technology, ecology, and governance.”

What We Do

We see urbanism as both a systems theory-based science and a transformative professional practice. This means:

• Studying how cities evolve under environmental, social, economic, technological and political pressures.
• Focusing on adapting existing urban areas through socio-technical innovations.
• Exploring urban form, from buildings and neighborhoods to entire regions, as expressions of complex socio-ecological systems.
• Using insights from urban morphogenesis, transition and futures studies, and social sciences to understand how cities are governed and physically reshaped.

Our methods range from qualitative research and ethnography to GIS, simulations, and VR experiments. We combine traditional approaches with cutting-edge digital tools.

Why It Matters

Urban challenges are particularly pressing in rapidly growing regions like the Metropolitan Region Eindhoven (MRE). Here, issues such as affordable housing, sustainable mobility, renewable energy, circular food systems, and resilient economies come together. These complex and interconnected challenges, so-called wicked problems, require a multi-actor approach to address them effectively.

The UUA Chair works closely with MRE stakeholders, bridging research, teaching, and practice to co-develop innovative solutions. While Eindhoven is our living lab, our research connects to global debates and international networks, ensuring local insights contribute to worldwide progress.

How We Work

We integrate research and teaching through a challenge-based, collaborative approach:

• UrbanLabs: where students and staff work with real actors on real challenges.
• Urban Development Initiative (UDI): research programs with PhDs, postdocs, and international consortia.

Our research agenda is guided by:

• Examining how urban form, townscape, and programming shape each other.
• Studying how global structures and agents affect the planning and governance of cities.
• Applying systems and transition theories to societal, ecological, and technological challenges.
• Critically translating global challenges into local solutions, building on existing social, spatial, and governance capital.