Vital Nodes at the AESOP Congress in Venice

Posted: 20th July 2019

The annual AESOP (Association of European Schools on Planning) Congress took place from the 9th to the 13th July in Venice, hosted by IUAV, the Higher Institute of Architecture of Venice. It brought together academics and practitioners from all over Europe and around the globe, who shared their insights on spatial planning and relevant related themes, under this year’s congress theme ‘’Planning for transition”.

Raymond Linssen and Kevin van der Linden (Rijkswaterstaat) participated to the conference on behalf of the Vital Nodes project, in order to present in two dedicated sessions the results gathered so far by the project.

The Vital Nodes presentations represented a relevant input and provided an added value for the general discussion during the congress. In particular, Vital Nodes contributed significantly to the debate by providing the freight and logistics perspective, rarely taken into account in other presentations, as well as the definition of Functional Urban Area (FUA), touched upon in other sessions mostly in relation with passenger mobility.

Furthermore, the results developed by Vital Nodes could provide valuable contribution to the discussion on topics such as nodal development and Transit Oriented development (TOD), by providing practical challenges and examples to be considered in academic research, by highlighting the importance of freight and logistics and the relevant integrated approach, and by broadening the scope – widely used at local and national level – towards a more international perspective.