Climate change is a key driver of major urban transitions. This PhD project is premised on the idea that these transitions require long-term strategic planning to provide a stable context for investment, create coherence in new infrastructure at the urban and regional levels, and coordinate with other forms of urban development. The goal of the project is to understand how the urban governance systems of actors, rules, and powers enable or constrain cities' ability to plan for the future. Therefore, the system in which planning decisions regarding climate-proofing the city are made should be well understood to identify the factors that lead to the success or failure of long-term planning. 

The research design centres on key decisions regarding urban transitions aimed at mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. An approach in which Amsterdam is compared with cities pursuing ambitious green transition agendas will be part of the research design. 

A provisional formulation of the central questions of the project is: How do governance arrangements enable or constrain Amsterdam’s long-term strategies for green urban transitions? What can Amsterdam do to improve the strategic capacity of its governance system by learning from international examples?

The project will focus on a particular problem associated with green urban transitions, such as the development of an energy cluster in the Amsterdam harbour, the expansion of the urban heat network, urban greening for extreme weather conditions (heat and rain), urban greening for biodiversity, or electrification to decarbonise housing and industry.

In addition to conventional qualitative methods such as document analysis, interviews, and case study research, the PhD candidate will contribute to the development of novel methods.

The PhD project will be supervised by dr. Jochem de Vries and dr. Michiel Stapper. 

Applicants are invited to develop a research proposal based on this project outline. The proposal allows you to specify and elaborate how you intend to address the questions posed in this advertisement. The proposal will focus on a particular problem associated with green urban transitions (and not the green transition in general). It will also contain concrete suggestions, with arguments, for comparative cases. The template for the proposal can be found below (under “Application process and contact information”).