Sustainable transformation of cities: The case of Eindhoven, the Netherlands

The question of sustainable urban development is linked to the issue of urban transformation; the challenge is to make use of ongoing transformation processes to achieve more sustainable urban environments. Hildebrand Frey is the main protagonist of the \u93urban cell theory\u94 (UCT), focused on the redesign of existing cities, laying down important arguments for neighborhood borders and centers. For decisions to pursue the sustainability path, the pragmatic method will be a practical tool in bringing sustainable considerations in the realm of project decisions. This paper examines the sustainable transformation of cities upon a re-mapping of the existing city to identify the potential urban cells, restructuring of the actual city of districts and neighborhoods; focused on Eindhoven as a case study, specifically the District of Woensel, describing the operationalization of the UCT as a conceptual framework. This work is structured in three parts: 1- a preliminary analysis identifying the existing neighborhoods in the district to analyze how the existing parts of the city meet the criteria of UCT; 2- the description of how to join non-potential and potential sustainable areas of the existing city to create \u93large units\u94 of the city; 3- The elaboration of results indicates that all the parts of the city are part of potential sustainable areas, obtaining hence a principal layer of the map of the sustainable city. The relevance of this approach is to contribute new insights to the debate of sustainable city borders