Dr Alexander Wandl is an urbanist and senior researcher at the chair of Environmental Technology and Design, at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment @TU Delft. His research focuses on developing sustainable urbanisation, using an extended territorial metabolism approach and integrating (gis-supported) methods and tools from different disciplines. As scientific coordinator of the Horizon 2020 financed research project REPAiR – Resource Management in peri-urban areas– he is at the forefront of developing spatial strategies, which support the transition towards a circular economy. He specifically focuses on the challenges related to the sustainable development of dispersed urban areas and peri-urbanisation processes in Europe.

As graduation mentor, Alex is interested in projects that strongly integrate aspects of urban and regional design, strategic planning and landscape ecology.
A graduation project should comprise both research and design. Possible graduation topics should be related to sustainable urban metabolism and can include:

– Strategies and design proposals for the urban renewal of neighbourhoods.
– Strategies and designs for the spatial development peri-, suburban and dispersed urban areas.
– Urban spatial strategies and design proposal for a shift towards a circular economy from the neighbourhood to the regional scale.

Selection of graduees supervised in the past years:

URBANISM
– Weizhen, L. (2018). Experimental Modelling for Allocating Recovery Facilities in the Metropolis
– Flores Herrera, E. (2019). Metavalley: Explorations of an adapted geodesign framework to integrate a regenerative approach and planning in the Metropolitan Area of the Valley of Mexico

MADE
– van der Wal, Laurens  (2020)  Planning degrowth: An explorative study into the value of a degrowth approach for sustainable urban planning in Amsterdam

EMU
– Überbacher, A. (2017)   Metropolitan Region Vienna-Bratislava, rethinking the dispersed territory in-between the two capital cities
– Babes, Vincent (2017)   Self-driven MRDH: A Method to Assess the Impact of Automated Vehicles on Urban Liveability in the Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Region

Relevant Publications:

Remøy, H., Wandl, A., Ceric, D., & van Timmeren, A. (2019). Facilitating circular economy in urban planning. Urban Planning, 4(3), 1-4. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v4i3.2484

Wandl, A., Balz, V., Qu, L., Furlan, C., Arciniegas Lopez, G., & Hackauf, U. (2019). The Circular Economy Concept in Design Education: Enhancing Understanding and Innovation by Means of Situated Learning. Urban Planning, 4(3), 63-75. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v4i3.2147

Wandl, A. (2017). Comparing the Landscape Fragmentation and Accessibility of Green Spaces in Territories-in-Between across Europe. Urban Planning, 2(4), 25-44. https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v2i4.1122

Wandl, A., & Magoni, M. (2017). Sustainable Planning of Peri-Urban Areas: Introduction to the Special Issue. Planning Practice and Research, 32(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2017.1264191

Wandl, A., Nadin, V., Zonneveld, WAM., & Rooij, RM. (2014). Beyond urban-rural classifications: Characterising and mapping territories-in-between across Europe. Landscape and Urban Planning, 130(October), 50-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2014.06.010