69 | March 2026: Designing with and for Many - NSL – Netzwerk Stadt und Landschaft

Dear Readers,

Designing with and for many means recognizing that urban transformation is shaped by diverse actors, knowledge, and interests. The articles in this issue explore how citizens, students, researchers, and planners can actively contribute to imagining and shaping urban futures – from participatory visualization in Sarajevo to collaborative learning formats and co-creative design tools. They also address the challenges of growing cities, including the need for more resilient traffic systems. At the same time, the contributions highlight that climate adaptation and green infrastructure must be carefully balanced with questions of social equity and housing affordability. Wishing you a stimulating read!

Small-scale intervention site on the future campus and cultural district of Sarajevo © ETH Zürich, chair Hubert Klumpner, Jasmin Agovic

Sarajevo Citizens Build Urban Imaginaries

Hannah Szechenyi, Dr. Michael Walczak | Architecture and Urban Design, Prof. Hubert Klumpner

What does collective planning, designing, and building really mean? When implementing new urban projects, architects face the challenge of visualizing planned changes for citizens. While diagrams, drawings, and renderings are standard, they often fail to communicate the physical reality of a project. The Urban Transformation Project Sarajevo (UTPS) addresses this by testing the Swiss Bauprofile in Sarajevo.

Students looking at an exhibition table

From Teaching to Active Learning: Co-designing a Toolbox for Inclusive and Regenerative Cities

Dr. Fernando Túlio Salva Rocha Franco, Chen Shen, Moyosola Oke, Gaia Banfi | Architecture and Urban Design, Prof. Hubert Klumpner

How can architectural education enable students to move beyond receiving lecture content and toward the co-production of transferable urban design knowledge? The Urban Stories Lecture Series is developing an active-learning framework that links lectures, workshops, seminars, exhibitions, and an emerging e-platform. Students shift from passive recipients of content to active co-producers of knowledge, contributing to the development of an Urban Design Toolbox.

Structure of the User Requirement Specification (URS) process to specify implementation contexts, scenarios, indicators, and characteristics of modeling and visualization tools. © Ulrike Wissen Hayek, Project CoCoNet, ETH Zürich

Co-Creative Streetscape Transformation: Specifying User Requirements for Integrated Modelling and Visualization Tools

Ulrike Wissen Hayek, Jonas Egeler | Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS), Prof. Dr. Adrienne Grêt-Regamey

Urban streetscapes need a redesign to meet pressing challenges associated with climate change and environmental degradation. This requires collaboration among a range of stakeholders. A user requirement study has specified what modelling and visualization tools are needed to support the co-creative design. These tools should facilitate cross‑disciplinary integration, without aiming for exhaustive detail.

Mathematical illustration of an (anti-)fragile system. @ Linghang Sun, ETH Zürich

Transform Fragile Traffic Networks with Antifragile Solutions

Linghang Sun | Traffic Engineering, Dr. Anastasios Kouvelas

With urbanization and centralized economic activities, recent years have witnessed steady population growth in major cities around the globe. For example, the population in the city of Zurich has increased by 16% between 2000 and 2020, which certainly leads to an ever-growing traffic demand, potentially more traffic accidents, and increasingly congested networks.

Projekt ReHousIn, Überlandpark Schwamendingen © ETH Zürich, Luisa Gehriger

Grüne Infrastruktur im Spannungsfeld von Aufwertung und Verdrängung: Erkenntnisse aus dem EU-Projekt ReHousIn

Luisa Gehriger | ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE

Im EU-Horizon-Projekt ReHousIn wird analysiert, wie städtische Klimaanpassungsstrategien die Bezahlbarkeit des Wohnens beeinflussen und mit entsprechenden Marktentwicklungen verflochten sind. Auf Basis von Expert:inneninterviews zeigt die Studie, dass klimabezogene Anpassungen Markterwartungen prägen und durch Aufwertung soziale Folgen nach sich ziehen können.

Publikationen

Dies ist eine Auswahl. Eine vollständige Liste finden Sie in der ETH Zürich Research Collection.

David Kaufmann, Mara Sidney (Ed.)

Global Urban Policy. A Framework for Analyzing State and Society

Cities are active policy innovators of global importance, whether responding to climate change, migration, poverty, or health disparities, or aiming to generate growth. Since cities adapt to the needs and interests of global capital, they may implement policies that slight the well-being of everyday residents and the most vulnerable. How cities choose to contribute to a democratic and sustainable future reveals dimensions of political life playing out in society at large.

Nitin Bathla, Silvia Cipelletti, Markus Lähteenmäki, Klearjos Papanicolaou (Editors)

Cinema and the City in the Age of Planetary Urbanization

1. April, 19:00 | Book launch | ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, gta Foyer, HIL D 50.5, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5.

How do cinema and planetary urbanization shape each other amid ecological and democratic crises? This book maps shifts in visual culture since the late 1980s as filmmakers, photographers, and artists probe the distant terrains of extended urbanization.

Book cover

Jacob Geuder

Between Streets and Screens. Digital Video Activism and the Right to the City

Between Streets and Screens offers a comparative ethnography of digital video activism in Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town in the early 2010s. Focusing closely on the practices of filming protests and police violence, the book shows how eyewitnesses and activists navigate the fine line between power and vulnerability when capturing audiovisual testimonies.

Linghang Sun, Yifan Zhang, Cristian Axenie, Margherita Grossi, Anastasios Kouvelas, Michail A. Makridis

The Fragile Nature of Road Transportation Networks

Major cities worldwide experience problems with the performance of their road transportation networks, and the continuous increase in traffic demand presents a substantial challenge to the optimal operation of urban road networks and the efficiency of traffic control strategies. The operation of transportation systems is widely considered to display fragile property, i.e., the loss in performance increases exponentially with the linearly growing magnitude of disruptions.

disP 61/4, December 2025

disP – The Planning Review, Volume 61, Issue 4, December 2025 is now available online.
Unmaking plans: enforcement, modification and the erosion of consent.

Weiterbildung | Studiengänge | Further Education

Infoveranstaltung CAS Zukunft der Raumentwicklung

31. März 2026, 12∶00 – 13∶00 | ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, online via Zoom (Link nach Registrierung).

CAS Zukunft der Raumentwicklung

Bewerbung: 15. April – 15.Juli (laufende Zulassung) | Ausbildungsdaten: 24. August 2026 – 12. Februar 2027.
Mehr

EPFL ETH Master of Advanced Studies in Urban and Territorial Design

Application: 1 January – 31 March 2026 | Duration: September 2026 – June 2027.

MScLA Admissions poster_2026. All information on the poster is given in the text below.

Master of Science in Landscape Architecture

Apply now for Autumn 2026!

SECOND APPLICATION PERIOD: 1 – 30 April 2026
Only for applicants with a Swiss Bachelor‘s degree

CAS ETH in Regenerative Materials – Structural Specialisation

earth. bio-based. reused

Application window: 15.05. – 15.07.2026 for September 2026 (Autumn Semester).

Kompaktkurs: Grundlagen der Raumplanung

25. – 27. August 2026 | ETH Zürich, Zentrum, LEE E 101.

Open Positions

Aktuell | Current

Dies ist eine Auswahl. Alle Artikel finden Sie auf der Seite Aktuell.

Stylised aerial view of Zurich. Zürich © Tobias Quezado Deckker

Zürich. Dialoge zur Dichte / Dialogues on Densification

27.2.2026 – 25.6.2026 | Exhibition and Events | ZAZ BELLERIVE Zentrum Architektur Zürich .

Athena Lecture Series: Stefania Koller

Neu: 24. März 2026, 18 Uhr | World Class Female Scholars | ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, HIL E 4.

Sessions on Territory x LUS Talks – Conservation: Objectives and Critique of Practice

On Mondays, 18:00–20:00 | Public debates | ETH Zürich, Oerlikon, Neunbrunnenstr. 50, ONA E25 DiD Lab.

Density, Densification, and Travel Perspectives from Zurich and Cambridge

31 March 2026, 13:00–17:00 | Meridian Hall, Collegium Helveticum.

2 + 2 + 1 Eine Debatte über zeitgenössische Landschaftsarchitektur

31. März 2026, 18:30 | L200, Langstr. 200, Zürich.

Die zeitgenössischen Herausforderungen aufgrund von Klimawandel und Verdichtung verlangen nach Adaption und Innovation.

Cinema and the City in the Age of Planetary Urbanization

1. April, 19:00 | Book launch | ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, gta Foyer, HIL D 50.5, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5.

How do cinema and planetary urbanization shape each other amid ecological and democratic crises? This book maps shifts in visual culture since the late 1980s as filmmakers, photographers, and artists probe the distant terrains of extended urbanization.

Portrait photos in black and white of the four lecturers.

CAS Regenerative Materials Public Lectures and Exhibition

13 April & 19 May 2026 | Public Lectures and Exhibition

Poster LUS Doc Crits 2026. All info on the poster is given in the text.

LUS Doctoral Crits Spring 2026

18 May 2026, 8:50-15:00 | L200, Langstrasse 200, 8005 Zürich.

The LUS Doctoral Crits provide a dedicated platform for doctoral researchers from within the institute and beyond to present their work and receive constructive feedback from LUS professors and invited guests. This public event showcases the breadth and depth of ongoing research at the Institute.

Reconstructing the Grande Salle of La Vedette

28. January – 24. May 2026 | Exhibition | Bard Graduate Center Gallery,18 West 86th Street, 10024 NewYork.

ETH Forum Wohnungsbau, ETH Zürich, 2024 © ETH Wohnforum / Foto: Matteo De Mattia

ETH Forum Wohnungsbau 2026: Grün und bezahlbar? Wohnraum zwischen Klimazielen und sozialer Nachhaltigkeit

9. September 2026 | ETH Zürich.

In ganz Europa wächst die Besorgnis über die steigenden Wohnkosten und die zunehmende Kluft zwischen Einkommen und Wohnkosten, insbesondere in städtischen Gebieten. Umwelt- und energiepolitische Massnahmen zur Förderung von energetischen Sanierungen, Verdichtung und naturbasierten Lösungen wurden als Faktoren identifiziert, die zu steigenden Wohnkosten beitragen und damit die Wohnungskrise verschärfen können.

NSL Kolloquium: Dynamic Landscapes | Gestalten mit Unsicherheiten

10. & 11. September 2026 | Architekturforum, Zürich.

Wie lässt sich Landschaft in einer Zukunft zunehmender Dynamik und Ungewissheit gestalten? Angesichts steigender hydrologischer Amplituden und klimatischer Herausforderungen geraten etablierte Methoden der planenden Disziplinen an ihre Grenzen.

Redaktionsteam | Editorial Board

Silvia Converso, Institut für Landschaft und Urbane Studien (LUS), Landschaftsarchitektur
Claudia Gebert, Koordinationsstelle NSL, Chefredaktion
Viera Klasovitá, Institut für Verkehrsplanung und Transportsysteme (IVT)
Klearjos Papanicolaou, Institut für Landschaft und Urbane Studien (LUS), Städtebau
Maarten Van Strien, Institut für Raum- und Landschaftsentwicklung (IRL)
Hannah Widmer, Institut für Landschaft und Urbane Studien (LUS), Städtebau

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