The debate on tourism in cities, both academically and in practice, has for a long time taken place in relative isolation from urban studies. Tourism is mostly addressed as an external agent and economic force that puts pressure on cities rather than as an interdependent part of city systems. The recent debate on city touristification and excessive dependence on the visitor economy, as well as the associated processes of exclusion, and displacement of local city users, serves to highlight how tourism is an integral part of urban developments. A wider urban perspective is needed to understand the processes underlying the tourism phenomena and more transdisciplinary perspectives are required to analyze the urban (tourism) practices. The current article seeks to contribute to such a perspective through a discussion of the literature on urban and tourism studies, and related fields such as gentrification, mobilities, and touristification. Based on this, theoretical reflections are provided regarding a more integral perspective to tourism and urban development in order to engage with a transversal urban tourism research agenda.
From the list of content: " Smart sustainable cities & higher education, Essence: what, why & how? Developing learning materials together; The blended learning environment; Teaching on entrepreneurship; Utrecht municipality as a client; International results; Studentexperiences; International relations; City projects in Turku, Alcoy and Utrecht ".
Smart glasses were perceived to be potentially revolutionary for healthcare, however, there is only limited research on the acceptance and social implications of smart glasses in healthcare. This study aims to get a better insight into the theoretical foundations and the purpose was to identify themes regarding adoption, mediation, and the use of smart glasses from the perspective of healthcare professionals. A qualitative research design with focus groups was used to collect data. Three focus groups with 22 participants were conducted. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Our analysis revealed six overarching themes related to the anticipated adoption of smart glasses: knowledge, innovativeness, use cases, ethical issues, persuasion, and attitude. Nine themes were found related to anticipated mediation and use of smart glasses: attention, emotions, social influences, design, context, camera use, risks, comparisons to known products, and expected reaction and might influence the acceptance of smart glasses.
The IMPULS-2020 project DIGIREAL (BUas, 2021) aims to significantly strengthen BUAS’ Research and Development (R&D) on Digital Realities for the benefit of innovation in our sectoral industries. The project will furthermore help BUas to position itself in the emerging innovation ecosystems on Human Interaction, AI and Interactive Technologies. The pandemic has had a tremendous negative impact on BUas industrial sectors of research: Tourism, Leisure and Events, Hospitality and Facility, Built Environment and Logistics. Our partner industries are in great need of innovative responses to the crises. Data, AI combined with Interactive and Immersive Technologies (Games, VR/AR) can provide a partial solution, in line with the key-enabling technologies of the Smart Industry agenda. DIGIREAL builds upon our well-established expertise and capacity in entertainment and serious games and digital media (VR/AR). It furthermore strengthens our initial plans to venture into Data and Applied AI. Digital Realities offer great opportunities for sectoral industry research and innovation, such as experience measurement in Leisure and Hospitality, data-driven decision-making for (sustainable) tourism, geo-data simulations for Logistics and Digital Twins for Spatial Planning. Although BUas already has successful R&D projects in these areas, the synergy can and should significantly be improved. We propose a coherent one-year Impuls funded package to develop (in 2021): 1. A multi-year R&D program on Digital Realities, that leads to, 2. Strategic R&D proposals, in particular a SPRONG/sleuteltechnologie proposal; 3. Partnerships in the regional and national innovation ecosystem, in particular Mind Labs and Data Development Lab (DDL); 4. A shared Digital Realities Lab infrastructure, in particular hardware/software/peopleware for Augmented and Mixed Reality; 5. Leadership, support and operational capacity to achieve and support the above. The proposal presents a work program and management structure, with external partners in an advisory role.
Nature areas in North-West Europe (NWE) face an increasing number of visitors (intensified by COVID-19) resulting in an increased pressure on nature, negative environmental impacts, higher management costs, and nuisance for local residents and visitors. The high share of car use exaggerates these impacts, including peak pressures. Furthermore, the almost exclusive access by car excludes disadvantaged people, specifically those without access to a car. At the same time, the urbanised character of NWE, its dense public transport network, well-developed tourism & recreation sector, and presence of shared mobility providers offers ample opportunities for more sustainable tourism. Thus, MONA will stimulate sustainable tourism in and around nature areas in NWE which benefits nature, the environment, visitors, and the local economy. MONA will do so by encouraging a modal shift through facilitating sustainableThe pan-European Innovation Action, funded under the Horizon Europe Framework Programme, aims to promote innovative governance processes ,and help public authorities in shaping their climate mitigation and adaptation policies. To achieve this aim, the GREENGAGE project will leverage citizens’ participation and equip them with innovative digital solutions that will transform citizen’s engagement and cities’ effectiveness in delivering the European Green Deal objectives for carbon neutral cities.Focusing on mobility, air quality and healthy living, citizens will be inspired to observe and co-create their cities by sensing their urban environments. The aim to complement, validate, and enrich information in authoritative data held by the public administrations and public agencies. This will be facilitated by engaging with citizens to co-create green initiatives and to develop Citizen Observatories. In GREENGAGE, Citizen Observatories will be a place where pilot cities will co-examine environmental issues integrating novel bottom-up process with top-down perspectives. This will provide the basis to co-create and co-design innovative solutions to monitor environmental problems at ground level with the help of citizens.With two interrelated project dimensions, the project aims to enhance intelligence applied to city decision-making processes and governance by engaging with citizen observations integrated with Copernicus, GEOSS, in-situ, and socio-economic intelligence, and by delivering innovative governance models based on novel toolboxes of decision-making methodologies and technologies. The envisioned citizens observatory campaigns will be deployed and fully demonstrated in 5 pilot engagements in selected European cities and regions including: Bristol (the United Kingdom), Copenhagen (Denmark), Turano / Gerace (Italy) and the region of Noord Brabant (the Netherlands). These innovation pilots aim to highlight the need for smart city governance by promoting citizen engagement, co-creation, gathering new data which will complement existing datasets and evidence-based decision and policymaking.
Client: Taskforce for Applied Research (SIA), part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), with funding from the ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW)Funder: RAAK (Regional Attention and Action for Knowledge circulation)This research is co-funded by the Taskforce for Applied Research (SIA), part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), under the RAAK scheme.Project SASTDes aimed to resolve key issues in the sustainability assessment process of tourism destinations, with the objective to reduce the costs of assessments both in time and money, and to use the results of assessments for destination branding and marketing. The project’s core research question was: ‘How can sustainability assessments effectively and efficiently contribute to the sustainable development of tourism destinations and tourism products?’ All 7 work packages of this project were ultimately geared towards the construction of the SASTDes tool, an application enabling all elements of a destination sustainability assessment, with which DMOs can integrate sustainability into their strategic and operational management. All the project’s accomplishments are described in the Project Overview report that can be downloaded on this page. See under Research Output for individual reports.The consortium was led by BUas’ Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport (CSTT). Knowledge partners were BUas’ associate professorships Sustainable Business Models (SBM) and Leisure and Tourism Experiences, Wageningen Environmental Research (WENR), part of Wageningen University & Research (WUR), and the associate professorship Data Science & ICT of Avans University of Applied Sciences. The municipalities of Breda, Goeree-Overflakkee and Schouwen-Duiveland, as well as Visit Zuid-Limburg, joined as destination partners. Tourism industry partners and NGO’s were Green Destinations, Follow, TUI Benelux, SeaGoingGreen, Fair Sayari, ECEAT, Treinreiswinkel, and bookdifferent.com.
