*Celebrating Spatial Planning at TU Delft: 2008-2019. Edited by Stead, Bracken, Rooij & Rocco

Urbanism . TU Delft 107
International Forum on
Urbanism (IFoU)
QU LEI, DIEGO SEPULVEDA
posing to take the lead in the executive
coordination again, starting
from 2020, and to share this
task with universities in Asia, such
as Tsinghua University in China.
Since 2006, two IFoU international
conferences and three IFoU
summer/spring schools have been
organized at TU Delft:
-“Permacity” (IFoU Conference,
November 2007)
-“The New Urban Question – Urbanism
beyond Neo-Liberalism”
(the 4th IFoU Conference, November
2009)
-“Randstad Challenge” (IFoU Summer
School, July 2009)
-“Making the Metropolis” (AMS/
DIMI/IFoU joint Summer School,
August 2017)
-“The Greater Bay Area-Hong Kong”
(Joint Spring School hosted by The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
in collaboration with TUD, RMIT,
University of Auckland, FAP Potsdam,
and FuturePlus Shenzhen).
These events bring partner institutes
from the IFoU network
together to exchange knowledge
and discuss the most relevant
societal issues in the context of
urbanisation. For example, the recent
Spring School focusing on the
Greater Bay Area in China raised
the question of “in what way
would design strategies within the
The International Forum on
Urbanism (IFoU) is a network
of universities, research institutes,
and knowledge centres with
the task to strengthen international
collaboration in the field of
urbanism. IFoU develops activities
including, but not limited to, international
conferences, joint studios,
and professional capacity building.
The organisation of IFoU consists
of the following institutional
bodies: Scientific Board, Board of
Supervisors, Distinguished Fellows,
Executive Team, and Central Office.
The Department of Urbanism at TU
Delft has played a key role in the
IFoU network since it was initiated
here in 2006. At the moment,
the Emeritus Professor of Urban
Design Henco Bekkering is one of
its three Distinguished Fellows, the
current Head of the Urbanism Department
Machiel van Dorst is part
of the Scientific Board, two staff
members, Diego Sepulveda and Lei
QU of the chair of Spatial Planning
and Strategy, are part of the
Executive Team (http://ifou.org/
organization/), as well as other
active staff members (e.g. Maurice
Harteveld, Gregory Bracken, Luisa
Calabrese) actively hosting and
participating in IFoU conferences
and summer schools.
Currently, the TU Delft team is prodisciplines
of spatial planning and
urban design have to adapt to become
proactive instruments within
the challenge of new mega-regions?”.
The event was organised
by two main partner institutes:
the Faculty of Architecture and the
Built Environment of TU Delft, and
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
School of Design. It critically
explored the diverse strategic
responses for global and regional
development, with its sight on
the recently defined “Greater Bay
Area” (GBA), the aims were to [1]
question the various formats of
mega-metropolisation, [2] its nuances
of difference at the “local”,
as well as [3] positioning the GBA
as one node within an even larger
mega-region node. The outcomes
materialised in students’ work
after a 14-week period addressed
theoretical, analytical, and methodological
aspects. The main
findings addressed socio-ecological
approaches, morphological
structures, and planning strategies
that define the main outlines for
the GBA’s transformation, and
will be continued in the 2020
TUDELFT_POLYU Spring School,
as a follow-up to the continuing
challenges of mega-regions and
globalisation.
Fig. 68: Students at an IFoU activity in Hong Kong. Photo provided by Qu Lei.