Urban scale models are crucial for communicating urban design ideas between various stakeholders, from those directly involved in a project – e.g. client, developer, contractor, municipality – to the broader public. However, our knowledge about this tool is limited. Understanding the shifting role of urban design from the More
Wie gelang es dem Botanischen Garten der Universität Zürich, in einem Land ohne Häfen, Kolonien und fernab der grossen Gartenbauzentren, durch Handel und Austausch neue Pflanzen einzuführen, in der Gartenkultur zu verbreiten und sich als Akteur im globalen Pflanzenhandel des 19. Jahrhunderts zu profilieren? Damit beschäftigt sich die More
In many cities around the world, urban ecosystem services (UES) are under pressure. With a growing urban population, the pressure on UES in the remaining open spaces increases. The planning of new residential areas to accommodate urban dwellers increasingly requires the consideration of UES, especially when taking into More
In a cooperation between the Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation (IKG) and the Chair of Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) a 3D Decision Support System (3D DSS) has been developed as a communication tool to support the planning of power lines. Now the 3D DSS has More
With a fast population increase and a high housing demand projected to continue in the coming decades, Geneva encounters a profound challenge. Since decades, the city has been spilling over across the national border. Urban growth and land consumption in the Canton and in the French part of More
In case of railway delays, train operating companies update the planned timetable to the actual disturbed conditions to keep offering high quality services to travellers. Passengers face an adjusted service, and corrective actions (a disposition timetable). This communication is often assumed to be perfect, complete and immediate, which More
Green city areas are under pressure. Compact cities aim to reduce land consumption outside cities, but densification puts pressure on urban green areas. Will the existing green areas suffice for the increased demand during pandemics such as COVID-19? Using recent mobility data before and during the pandemic, we More
The potential large-scale transition from working in the office to working at home, is a massive uncertainty related to the future needs of office space in our cities. It is in the face of this uncertainty, that real estate developers must manage their portfolios. The use of the More
Paulownia (Paulowniaceae) is one of the world’s fastest growing trees, originally introduced from Asia to Europe in the 17th century. Its wood is one of the lightest, while keeping high flexibility and stability, making it an ideal wood for regenerative composite constructions (a wood core sandwiched by fiber More
The elective course «Territory of the city» focused on Marseille and Naples, two cities enduring long-term economic and social crises. Like other Mediterranean port cities, they are directly affected by global warming and face increasing threats of natural hazards. The recent creation of the «Métropole Aix-Marseille-Provence» (2016) and the More
Over the last four years, the Institute for Transportation Planning and Systems (IVT) at ETH Zurich and CITIES at NYU Abu Dhabi have gathered urban traffic data from over 40 cities worldwide, including London, Tokyo, and Zurich. In total, almost 5 billion vehicles covering a combined time span More
incolab bringt Innovationen in Technik und Prozessdesign der Gruppe Planung von Landschaft und Urbanen Systemen (PLUS) in die Praxis. Das ETH Spin-off denkt die integrierte Landschaftsentwicklung weiter und bewirkt damit einen nachhaltigen Wandel im Umgang mit der Landschaft. Hierzu verbindet incolab bspw. das Assessment von Ökosystemleistungen, Visualisierungstechniken und More
Initiative to form across different institutes a group responding to the diverse challenges and opportunities around daylight, with a multidisciplinary research platform to address questions of better including aspects of daylight in sustainable urban design and innovative energy technologies to support human wellbeing, living comfort, and health. The project offers two More
Could we imagine extending the concept of participation beyond the social and civic aspects of a community? Could we go far enough to include non-humans, landscapes, histories, ecologies and the environment in which a community is rooted? What kind of new constellations would this imply and what possibilities More
Wie definiert man schöne Landschaft, wenn die Schönheit im Auge der Betrachterin und des Betrachters liegt? Was viele gar nicht wissen: Die Schweiz hat sich dazu verpflichtet, Landschaften und ihre Qualitäten zu erfassen, zu beschreiben und zu bewerten. Machine Learning Algorithmen können hierbei hilfreich sein. Interview im Zukunftsblog More
How do we plan the adaptation of mountain territories for the challenges of the future? In particular, how do we maintain key ecosystem services to guarantee their capacity for adaptation? We engaged with stakeholders about these challenges through participatory research, building their vision for the future of their More
Prof. Teresa Gali-Izard started her chair of landscape architecture at ETH Zurich in 2020, co-creating the new master in landscape architecture which starts this autumn semester. In our interview she talks about her influences such as Augustin Berque, her background, and her commitment to experimenting with new forms More
Citizen participation in planning and politics was a central promise of the first democratic government in South Africa. However, despite efforts for engaging civil society in local governance, planning remains state-driven and problems of implementation prevail. We explore participatory practices in South Africa from the perspective of the More
It is widely assumed that popular visual art, such as murals, can potentially be a powerful driver for urban regeneration with important social, economic and environmental benefits. The voices of those directly affected by these type of interventions, however, are often missing. Our research in two informal neighbourhoods in More
This dissertation project examines the emergence, narrative, and translation of traditional landscape meanings in contemporary landscape architecture projects. It uncovers a complex web of meanings, ideologies, and conflicts grounded upon different cultural and historical interpretations. On this basis, the dissertation argues for a mediating approach in landscape architecture More
Spatial design is often confronted with an immense diversity of transformation processes. As a designer it is often difficult to fully acknowledge this immanent complexity and find a position to intervene. How can we answer questions as ‘With whom do I collaborate? How does personal transformation play a More
Access to and the safeguarding of suitable and affordable housing is difficult for disadvantaged groups in Swiss cities as such groups often include people with few professional qualifications, various kinds of handicaps, and few financial resources. Among them are migrants and refugees, elderly people, and the «working poor», More
Wie nehmen wir unseren Lebensraum wahr? Wie erleben wir die Atmosphäre eines Ortes, wo fühlen wir uns sicher, wo fühlen wir uns gut? Diese Fragen werden umso wichtiger, je mehr Menschen in städtischen Gebieten leben. Ziel von Streetwise ist es, das Wissen und die Betroffenheit der Bevölkerung für More
The transdisciplinary research project «Virtual Environments as a Decision-making Tool for Public Lighting in Bogotá» focuses on lighting technology and its performance in Bogotá’s densifying urban environments. New lighting approaches are co-created together with informal settlement dwellers and tested with Colombian policy-makers through a Virtual Environment.
Following the six-year r4d project «managing telecoupled landscapes», PLUS received an r4d Transformation Accelerating Grant to continue its work in northeastern Madagascar. Based on the developed land-use change scenarios, a collaborative visioning and planning will be conducted over a period of twelve months. For this project, PLUS collaborates More
Das NFP 70-Projekt «ENERGYSCAPE» untersuchte gesellschaftliche Präferenzen für eine Landschaftsentwicklung durch Infrastrukturen erneuerbarer Energien. Die aus den Ergebnissen abgeleiteten Empfehlungen können helfen, die landschaftliche Beurteilung von Anlagen erneuerbarer Energien aus Sicht der Bevölkerung in Landschaftsentwicklungskonzepten besser zu berücksichtigen. Ulrike Wissen Hayek, PLUS
What are key skillsets of the next generation’s planners, designers, architects or engineers? The instrumental and social capacities to creatively cope with complexity, within ever changing environments, in a cooperative way surely are amongst them. Systemic Design Labs are ETH Innovedum financed real-world experimental courses that foster such More
Addressing the former industrial area of Acetati in Verbania (IT), on the northern Italian shore of Lago Maggiore, the project sets out to explore the ambiguous nature of contemporary residual landscapes. With an attitude of carefully collecting and radically exposing materials, flows, historical layers and traces of production, More
Under the headers of ‘collaboration’, ‘participatory design’ and ‘co-production’ participation is nowadays at the centre of the debate on urban design. Architects and urban designers are developing new concepts, tools and roles to comply with these new participatory modi operandi. However, it seems that it is sometimes forgotten More
A new approach in landscape design uses point cloud modeling to integrate spatial, aesthetic and quantitative features of the landscape. The method is applicable in any location and thus makes it useful to a wide range of topics, whether in the context of cultural, agricultural or urban landscapes, More
Researchers at the Future Cities Laboratory are using virtual reality (VR) in cycling experiments to reveal users’ cycling behaviour and preferences in different environments. These insights can help planners understand and quantify the impact of infrastructure improvements in setting guidelines and prioritization of new infrastructure.
Der lebendige ländliche Raum ist eines der grossen Themen der Raumentwicklung. Hier treffen Tradition und wirtschaftliche Innovation, neue Rechtsgrundlagen und Emotionen aufeinander. Die 13. Landmanagement Tagung «Herausforderungen der baulichen Entwicklung im ländlichen Raum» bot den aktuellen und vielfältigen Themen aus Verwaltung, Forschung und Praxis eine Plattform. Auch der More
Partizipative Planungsprozesse leben von einer gemeinsamen Vision der Beteiligten. Sie hilft, den Prozess und die Diskussionen konstruktiv zu gestalten. Es bleibt jedoch offen, welche Schritte und Massnahmen zur Erreichung der Vision erforderlich sind. Am Fall Wauwiler Ebene wurden diese Fragen mit der Methode des Backcastings beantwortet und Handlungsschwerpunkte More
Can we, as researchers of the territory, still investigate and learn about our built and the unbuilt environments through direct experience? Can we rely merely on digital cartographies, or should we still be explorers who embark on journeys of discovery? We have tried to answer these questions by More
In her book Governing the Commons (1990), political economist and Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom identified spaces and infrastructures as ‘common resources’ fostered by groups of citizens in order to resist top-down governance and commodification. Today, the notion of the ‘urban commons’ appears as an index for historians More
Agent-based models in transportation model individual travelers and their interaction in the transport system on a micro-level. A natural advantage of agent-based models are flexibility and the ability to model emergent behavior. Work at IVT has produced a new software package, eqasim, that drastically simplifies the design of More
The societal needs for infrastructure change drastically over time depending on a large variety of factors, which are very difficult to predict. It is in the face of this massive uncertainty, that urban planners are expected to make infrastructure decisions. To minimize the service risks over time, the More
Anastasios Kouvelas now leads the group Traffic Engeneering (SVT) at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems (IVT). He thinks the shift from human driven to automated cars is like the shift from horse-car traffic to automobiles. Learn more about his views on the future of our daily road More
Die Debatte um Dichte in der Schweiz ist nicht neu. Tatsächlich ist sie älter und stärker verwurzelt im Fachdiskurs als oft angenommen wird: sie entbrannte stets in Phasen starken Bevölkerungswachstums, das oft mit der unkontrollierten Zersiedelung des Kulturlandes und erhöhter Landspekulation einherging. Noch bevor das Wort «Dichte» im More
«Mit einer intelligenten Verkehrspolitik in die multimobile Zukunft», lautet der Titel der vom Bundesamt für Raumentwicklung ARE verfassten Medienmitteilung zur ersten Nationalen Mobilitätskonferenz, die Ende August in Bern stattfand. Mit einer Open Session daran teilgenommen haben Miriam Lüdi und Sibylle Wälty. Sie zeigten auf, wieso eine Abstimmung der More
Densification policies are at the core of the current revisions of the Swiss Spatial Planning Act. This new research project at the group of Spatial Development and Urban Policy (SPUR) analyzes the effects of densification policies on the housing market and the socio-economic population composition by making use More
Wie sieht die optimale Siedlungsform aus, welche Nachhaltigkeit mit einer hohen Wohn- und Aufenthaltsqualität verbindet? Während kompakte Strukturen den Landverbrauch minimieren, übt eine innere Verdichtung der Städte Druck auf die verbleibenden Grünflächen aus, was sich auf die Bereitstellung von Ökosystemleistungen und letztendlich auf die Lebensqualität der wachsenden städtischen More
Raumplanerische Bedeutung und Zukunftsperspektiven des nicht gewinnorientierten Siedlungsbestandes in der Schweiz Steigende Wohnkosten sowie fehlende preisgünstige Wohnangebote stellen gerade in zentralen städtischen Lagen mit hohem Bevölkerungsdruck nicht nur in der Schweiz ein hochaktuelles Problemfeld dar. Gemeinnützigen Bauträgerschaften kommt in dieser Thematik insofern eine hohe Relevanz zu, als dass More
Densification is the central paradigm of the current revisions of the Swiss Spatial Planning Act. Densification can be motivated by concerns as to ecology or affordability. The newly established research group «Spatial Development and Urban Policy» (SPUR) at ETH Zürich will examine effects of densification policies in Switzerland. More
Kay Axhausen ist nun für zwei Jahre neuer Leiter des Netzwerks Stadt und Landschaft. Er äussert sich hier zur Zusammenarbeit der Disziplinen Städtebau, Raum- und Landschaftsentwicklung und Verkehrsplanung sowie zur Neuordnung der Strassenfinanzierung in der Schweiz aufgrund automatischer Fahrzeuge.
The project Managing telecoupled landscapes for the sustainable provision of ecosystem services and poverty alleviation (2015-2020), supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), assesses the impacts and opportunities that arise when distant but coupled, or telecoupled, systems interact with More
Die Siedlungsentwicklung im gewachsenen Bestand definiert einen Wendepunkt in der Raumentwicklung. Sie verändert Wesen der Planung und Anforderungen an sie. Die Spatial Transformation Labortories (STL) bieten eine neue Plattform zur Erforschung integrativer Ansätze für die kommenden Herausforderungen der Planung und Entwicklung unserer Lebensräume.
Um Arbeit, Freizeit und Wohnen möglichst nahe zu verbinden, zieht es immer mehr Menschen in Städte und ihre Agglomerationen. Vielerorts wird in die Fläche expandiert, die Schweiz hingegen möchte das prognostizierte Arbeitsplatz- und Bevölkerungswachstum vor allem durch die Transformation bereits bebauter Flächen absorbieren. Eine schwierige Aufgabe, zumal das More