Data has been collected since mankind, but in the recent years the technical innovations enable us to collect exponentially growing amounts of data through the use of sensors, smart devices and other sources. In her lecture Nanda will explore the role of Big Data in urban environments. She will give an introduction to the world of Big Data and Smart Cities, and an assessment of the role that data analytics plays in the current state of the digital transformation in our cities. Examples are given in the field of energy and mobility.
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from the article: Abstract Based on a review of recent literature, this paper addresses the question of how urban planners can steer urban environmental quality, given the fact that it is multidimensional in character, is assessed largely in subjective terms and varies across time. The paper explores three questions that are at the core of planning and designing cities: ‘quality of what?’, ‘quality for whom?’ and ‘quality at what time?’ and illustrates the dilemmas that urban planners face in answering these questions. The three questions provide a novel framework that offers urban planners perspectives for action in finding their way out of the dilemmas identified. Rather than further detailing the exact nature of urban quality, these perspectives call for an approach to urban planning that is integrated, participative and adaptive. ; ; sustainable urban development; trade-offs; quality dimensions
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The crossroads of living in cities on the one hand and ageing of the population on the other is studied in an interdisciplinary field of research called urban ageing (van Hoof and Kazak 2018, van Hoof et al. 2018). People live longer and in better health than ever before in Europe. Despite all the positive aspects of population ageing, it poses many challenges. The interaction of population ageing and urbanisation raises issues in various domains of urban living (Phillipson and Buffel 2016). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD 2015), the population share of those of 65 years old is expected to climb to 25.1% in 2050 in its member states. Cities in particular have large numbers of older inhabitants and are home to 43.2% of this older population. The need to develop supportive urban communities are major issues for public policy to understand the relationship between population ageing and urban change (Buffel and Phillipson 2016). Plouffe and Kalache (2010) see older citizens as a precious resource, but in order to tap the full potential these people represent for continued human development (Zaidi et al. 2013), the world’s cities must ensure their inclusion and full access to urban spaces, structures, and services. Therefore, cities are called upon to complement the efforts of national governments to address the consequences of the unprecedented demographic shift (OECD 2015). Additionally, at the city level there is a belief to understand the requirements and preferences of local communities (OECD 2015). An important question in relation to urban ageing is what exactly makes a city age-friendly (Alley et al. 2007, Lui et al. 2009, Plouffe and Kalache 2010, Steels 2015, Moulaert and Garon 2016, Age Platform Europe 2018)? Another relevant question is which factors allow some older people in cities to thrive, while others find it hard to cope with the struggles of daily life? This chapter explores and describes which elements and factors make cities age-friendly, for instance, on the neighbourhood level and in relation to technology for older people.
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Studies on city‐building games as educational tools show positive results in addressing different learning objectives, but also identify a missing link to reality, as they are mostly computer‐based. Given the differences between existing games and their capabilities, the exact function of these games in an urban planning curriculum is unclear. The city‐building game Cities: Skylines currently has three different versions (Digital, Tabletop, VR). Through an affordance analysis of the game’s three versions, this study analyses how the versions afford four primary knowledge dimensions, and in doing so identifies different educational applications for each version of Cities: Skylines in different planning disciplines. The results show that: (a) the board game is strong in fostering player participation and critical thinking more suited for the social and health studies, public policy, and citizen participation domains of urban planning; (b) the digital version functions as moddable simulator, ensuring familiarity with existing systems and monitoring their effects, useful in logistics and transportation planning; (c) the VR form viscerally involves players in the simulated processes, applicable in design‐focused segments of urban planning, such as sustainable design theory, housing, and land‐use management. The results of this study can help urban planning educators identify possible uses for different versions of Cities: Skylines.
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Limited data is available on the size of urban goods movement and its impact on numerous aspects with respect to livability such as emissions and spatial impact. The latter becomes more important in densifying cities. This makes it challenging to implement effective measures that aim to reduce the negative impact of urban good movement and to monitor their impact. Furthermore, urban goods movement is diverse and because of this a tailored approach is required to take effective measures. Minimizing the negative impact of a heavy truck in construction logistics requires a different approach than a parcel delivery van. Partly due to a lack of accurate data, this diversity is often not considered when taking measures. This study describes an approach how to use available data on urban traffic, and how to enrich these with other sources, which is used to gain insight into the decomposition (number of trips and kilometers per segment and vehicle type). The usefulness of having this insight is shown for different applications by two case studies: one to estimate the effect of a zero-emission zone in the city of Utrecht and another to estimate the logistics requirements in a car-free area development.
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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.
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Recent advancements in mobile sensing and wearable technologies create new opportunities to improve our understanding of how people experience their environment. This understanding can inform urban design decisions. Currently, an important urban design issue is the adaptation of infrastructure to increasing cycle and e-bike use. Using data collected from 12 cyclists on a cycle highway between two municipalities in The Netherlands, we coupled location and wearable emotion data at a high spatiotemporal resolution to model and examine relationships between cyclists' emotional arousal (operationalized as skin conductance responses) and visual stimuli from the environment (operationalized as extent of visible land cover type). We specifically took a within-participants multilevel modeling approach to determine relationships between different types of viewable land cover area and emotional arousal, while controlling for speed, direction, distance to roads, and directional change. Surprisingly, our model suggests ride segments with views of larger natural, recreational, agricultural, and forested areas were more emotionally arousing for participants. Conversely, segments with views of larger developed areas were less arousing. The presented methodological framework, spatial-emotional analyses, and findings from multilevel modeling provide new opportunities for spatial, data-driven approaches to portable sensing and urban planning research. Furthermore, our findings have implications for design of infrastructure to optimize cycling experiences.
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Smart charging protocols for electric vehicles can help avoid overload and instability in the electrical distribution network and can increase the proportion of locally generated solar energy used for charging. Our results show that the impact of smart charging depends heavily on the technical charging characteristics of the target vehicle.
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This article analyses four of the most prominent city discourses and introduces the lens of urban vitalism as an overarching interdisciplinary concept of cities as places of transformation and change. We demonstrate the value of using urban vitalism as a lens to conceptualize and critically discuss different notions on smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable just cities. Urban vitalism offers a process-based lens which enables us to understand cities as places of transformation and change, with people and other living beings at its core. The aim of the article is to explore how the lens of vitalism can help us understand and connect ongoing interdisciplinary academic debates about urban development and vice versa, and how these ongoing debates inform our understanding of urban vitalism.
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Comprehensive understanding of the merits of bottom-up urban development is lacking, thus hampering and complicating associated collaborative processes. Therefore, and given the assumed relevancies, we mapped the social, environmental and economic values generated by bottom-up developments in two Dutch urban areas, using theory-based evaluation principles. These evaluations raised insights into the values, beneficiaries and path dependencies between successive values, confirming the assumed effect of placemaking accelerating further spatial developments. It also revealed broader impacts of bottom-up endeavors, such as influences on local policies and innovations in urban development.
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