Living and commuting in urban areas

<div><p>How can we balance housing demands with mobility needs while creating a sustainable, inclusive, and safe living environment? What is needed to keep <a itemtype="1" pagetype="landing" class="siteLink ptlanding" resolved="true" href="https://www.tno.nl/en/digital/liveable-cities-regions/">cities livable</a> and public spaces functional, balancing living, moving, and staying for all?</p><p>Addressing these challenges requires innovative, integrated solutions to ensure urban areas remain equitable and vibrant.</p></div>

1. Develop practical indicators, scenarios and decision-making processes that support a healthy living environment.

<div><p>For example:</p><ul> <li>Develop quantifiable indicators for ‘soft’ criteria, i.e. healthy living and well-being</li> <li>Develop a methodology to consolidate health as a concrete factor in the various phases of area development and planning processes.</li> </ul></div>

2. Build a data hub for the built environment that offers trusted data, standards, and which is accessible and interchangeable by user-friendly tooling.

<div><p>For example:</p><ul> <li>Provide banks with data to accurately determine flooding risks for portfolio analysis</li> <li>Offer policymakers new insights on planning dilemmas through safe data sharing technologies such as Secure Multi-Party Computation</li> </ul></div>

3. Apply advanced multi-model calculation in the spatial domain on existing and newly developed models.

<div><p>For example:</p><ul> <li>Create a model to calculate costs and benefits of large-scale interventions in the public space that promote nature-inclusive construction</li> <li>Use computing power to calculate the required infrastructure for planning a new housing project</li> </ul></div>

Soort project:: Project
Thema:: Liveable cities and regions; Work health

Shaping a sustainable future with Balanced Spatial Choices

Status project

2024-2027

In our densely populated country, space is scarce, and competing priorities complicate spatial planning. Lack of interrelated insights and data further delays decision-making, hindering progress on functional goals and transitions. TNO's Balanced Spatial Choices programme helps governments, policymakers, and businesses make informed, integrated spatial decisions by balancing social, environmental, and economic needs.

The complexity of urban planning

How can municipalities fulfil their housing task whilst regarding all requirements with respect to mobility, services, energy, water and the wellbeing of citizens?

What indicators can construction companies and project developers use to quantify health goals formulated for a newly developed housing plan? With so many decisions to be made in our region, involving so many stakeholders and different interests, how can we prioritise and make future proof choices?

Policies and programs like the Omgevingswet, Nationale Omgevingsvisie, Schone Lucht Akkoord, and the growing emphasis on welfare beyond GDP are reshaping spatial planning and highlighting the need for innovative decision-making.

Integral spatial decisions are the way forward

Current spatial decision-making is fragmented, reactive, and slow, leading to harmful, irreversible outcomes and hindering transitions toward a sustainable, healthy society. To address this, we must project social, environmental, and economic needs onto the space around us more effectively, understanding their spatial requirements and interconnections.

How can we meet objectives for health, biodiversity, climate change, mobility, housing, and social cohesion while preserving and utilising space wisely?

The answer lies in balanced spatial decisions—integral, well-informed, and trusted. These decisions leverage data, address complexity and uncertainty, and align social, environmental, and economic priorities.

Introducing Balanced Spatial Choices

With Balanced Spatial Choices (BSC), TNO introduces a multiyear programme to drive, support, and substantiate integrated spatial decision-making for a healthy, sustainable, and safe living environment.

Demand-driven and guided by the needs of public and private stakeholders, the programme focuses on balanced solutions to societal challenges.

By leveraging expertise in technology, data, and decision-making methods, TNO provides partners with unique insights to navigate complex trade-offs. Spatial planning delays caused by uncertainty, unreliable data, or computational limitations are addressed through innovative solutions, such as advanced computing power, faster calculations, and smarter processes to evaluate indicators.

Our evidence-based, data-driven approach ensures transparency, enabling decisions that build trust and collaboration with stakeholders, including communities, businesses, and organisations.

Products and services

The BSC programme is designed to tackle key challenges in spatial decision-making by offering our partners 3 solutions.

On this basis TNO will be able to support decision makers with (licenced) tools to perform solid and trustful scenario analysis on spatial plans and predict impact on relevant living environment indicators.

For example:

Develop quantifiable indicators for ‘soft’ criteria, i.e. healthy living and well-being
Develop a methodology to consolidate health as a concrete factor in the various phases of area development and planning processes.

For example:

Provide banks with data to accurately determine flooding risks for portfolio analysis
Offer policymakers new insights on planning dilemmas through safe data sharing technologies such as Secure Multi-Party Computation

For example:

Create a model to calculate costs and benefits of large-scale interventions in the public space that promote nature-inclusive construction
Use computing power to calculate the required infrastructure for planning a new housing project

Key focus areas

Based on our expertise and current spatial planning challenges, our solutions focus on the following topics and dilemmas:

How can we balance housing demands with mobility needs while creating a sustainable, inclusive, and safe living environment? What is needed to keep cities livable and public spaces functional, balancing living, moving, and staying for all?

Addressing these challenges requires innovative, integrated solutions to ensure urban areas remain equitable and vibrant.

How can spatial choices promote health and reduce disparities? How do we create accessible spaces for sports, interaction, and relaxation? What facilities are essential for wellbeing, and how do climate change and urbanisation affect health?

Integrating health into policies for energy, economy, and housing is crucial, as is addressing inequities affecting vulnerable groups.

How can spatial choices adapt to climate change impacts like drought, extreme weather, and rising sea levels? What are the requirements for climate adaptation, and how can principles like "water and soil first" guide decisions while ensuring public health, equity, and economic priorities?

Unique right to play

Where most planning experts on the market provide highly specialised, in-depth knowledge in a specific field, TNO offers its partners a broader perspective needed to make well balanced, integral planning decisions. TNO offers profound expertise on several buildings blocks that are crucial for creating a safe and healthy living environment, for example in infrastructure, mobility, health, subsurface, and air quality.

Furthermore, TNO has the unique capability to build a trusted data environment and to build the framework for a multi-parameter decision support system.

Based on this unique combination of multi-disciplinary and technological knowledge, TNO is a valuable partner to support integrated spatial decision-making for a healthy, sustainable, and safe living environment.

Collaboration opportunities

As our BSC programme has a strong outside–in focus, the societal topics and challenges of our partners are the starting point of our conversation.

At TNO we are committed to establishing a comprehensive programme that addresses all key aspects of spatial planning through innovative, cross-domain collaboration. By working together, we can develop more effective solutions and achieve greater impact.

Contact us

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Marianne Aalbersberg

Functie:
Business Developer Living environment, climate adaptation and spatial choices
I am responsible at TNO for the innovation programmes for liveable cities and regions, with a focus on mobility, climate adaptation, and spatial planning decisions. How do we solve the spatial puzzle effectively, both for now and the future? We work closely with businesses and governments to achieve the most impactful innovations.

More about Marianne
- Standplaats:
  Delft - Molengraaffsingel (NEXT)
- Email:
  Email Marianne