Co Verdaas appointed Professor of Urban Area Development
The Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment is pleased to announce the appointment of Co Verdaas as Professor of Urban Area Development. In the upcoming years, the chair will focus on the development of concepts for sustainable urban areas, in order to maintain and improve the value of the built environment as it relates to the user, the experience, and the future.
The work of the Chair of Urban Area Development includes raising attention for urgent issues, developing applications, making expertise more widely available, and making connections between parties. As Professor of Urban Area Development, Verdaas will be keeping the broad social context in view. Major themes for the coming decades with a spatial context include housing construction, the structure of agriculture, energy transition, and mobility. Verdaas foresees opportunities here for a coordinating role for the government, so market parties know where they stand and where their investments can bear fruit. At the same time, there are also opportunities for involving new market partners in the Urban Area Development Knowledge Foundation (SKG), in order to further develop knowledge, insight and applications in this field. The connection between urban area development and other major social questions creates the perspective needed to think about how the ‘big picture’ will function in the near future.
These objectives will be worked out in more detail in the coming five years. Verdaas is considering focusing in depth on a particular theme each year, using input from scientist colleagues and partners in the SKG. This will enable new perspectives to be explored, in which housing construction is linked to ecological values. The combination of digitalisation and big data together with the emergence of smart cities also presents new opportunities. This is how concepts can be developed for sustainable urban areas.
Co Verdaas has over twenty years’ experience in academia, in practice, and in governance. In all of his public and administrative positions, his focus was on spatial developments. He has worked for Wageningen University and Research, the municipality of Zwolle and a housing corporation, he was a Member of the House of Representatives and a Member of the Provincial-Executive of Gelderland. He obtained his doctorate on the planning system. Verdaas also works at consultancy agency Over Morgen. He is member of the Council for the Environment and Infrastructure.
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Vincent Gruis (Head of Department): “Co Verdaas will be an enthusiastic professor able to bring people together. He can give an impulse to both the practice and the science of Urban Area Development, dealing with current issues like circularity and the new Omgevingswet by collaborating with governments, market parties, knowledge institutions, and civilians.”
For more information:
Karen Collet (press officer TU Delft)
K.Collet@tudelft.nl
+31 (0)15 278 5408