Urban tourism increasingly focuses on the role of hospitality in cities, evolving from a means to strengthen tourism as a ‘product’, towards a focus on tourism as an opportunity for revitalization and transformation of destinations. In this context, cities are considered dynamic communities in which ‘hosts’ (entrepreneurs, residents, municipalities) and ‘guests’ (visitors, tourists) co-habitate and co-create multisensorial experiences. This shift in focus comes hand in hand with increasing awareness of competitiveness and sustainability of destinations, expressed by a harmonious relationship between city residents and visitors and a balanced usage of the city as a shared resource. This is of great importance, given the intense usage of urban spaces – the city center of Amsterdam being an illustrative example – and the multiple purposes that these spaces represent for different stakeholders. This paper presents the outcome of a review study into city hospitality experience indicators. We integrate these indicators as a basis for the development of a new scale for measuring the effectiveness of hospitality interventions in relation to outcome variables such as satisfaction and net promotor score (NPS). We thereby provide an important means for scholars and practitioners to develop sustainable tourism actions inclusive of local community interests, in support of efforts toward more balanced city experiences among all stakeholders.
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This paper discusses the current developments, as well as the barriers and opportunities for using electric freight vehicles in daily city logistics operations based on the experiences from a number of running demonstrations. This paper discusses results from other studies and demonstrations that were published on electro mobility in city logistics in the last three years, as an update of an earlier state of the art review. Next, we present recent narratives based on the more than 100 electric freight vehicles (EFVs) deployed in the European project FREVUE and the experiences of TransMission in using four battery electric Cargohoppers to perform their urban deliveries in Amsterdam. Over the years the attention shifted from a focus on the limitations of EFVs in comparison to conventional vehicles, such as the limited range, towards the question how to better adapt the operations to deal with the EFV characteristics. Although, the business case for using EFVs, in comparison to conventional vehicles, is still suffering from high vehicle purchase price and uncertainty about its residual value, the use of EFVs in daily operations shows that in the majority of cases the current generation of EFVs have a good technical performance. Companies using EFVs are generally satisfied with these vehicles. Obviously still a number of barriers has to be levelled, but large scale EFV usage seems more feasible than before. © 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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The increasing rate of urbanization along with its socio-environmental impact are major global challenges. Therefore, there is a need to assess the boundaries to growth for the future development of cities by the inclusion of the assessment of the environmental carrying capacity (ECC) into spatial management. The purpose is to assess the resource dependence of a given entity. ECC is usually assessed based on indicators such as the ecological footprint (EF) and biocapacity (BC). EF is a measure of the biologically productive areas demanded by human consumption and waste production. Such areas include the space needed for regenerating food and fibers as well as sequestering the generated pollution, particularly CO2 from the combustion of fossil fuels. BC reflects the biological regeneration potential of a given area to regenerate resources as well to absorb waste. The city level EF assessment has been applied to urban zones across the world, however, there is a noticeable lack of urban EF assessments in Central Eastern Europe. Therefore, the current research is a first estimate of the EF and BC for the city of Wrocław, Poland. This study estimates the Ecological Footprint of Food (EFF) through both a top-down assessment and a hybrid top-down/bottom-up assessment. Thus, this research verifies also if results from hybrid method could be comparable with top-down approach. The bottom-up component of the hybrid analysis calculated the carbon footprint of food using the life cycle assessment (LCA) method. The top-down result ofWrocław’s EFF were 1% greater than the hybrid EFF result, 0.974 and 0.963 gha per person respectively. The result indicated that the EFF exceeded the BC of the city of Wrocław 10-fold. Such assessment support efforts to increase resource efficiency and decrease the risk associated with resources—including food security. Therefore, there is a need to verify if a city is able to satisfy the resource needs of its inhabitants while maintaining the natural capital on which they depend intact. Original article at: https://doi.org/10.3390/resources7030052 © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI.
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In less than two years, the concept of overtourism has come to prominence as one of the most discussed issues with regards to tourism in popular media and, increasingly, academia. In spite of its popularity, the term is still not clearly delineated and remains open to multiple interpretations. The current paper aims to provide more clarity with regard to what overtourism entails by placing the concept in a historical context and presenting results from a qualitative investigation among 80 stakeholders in 13 European cities. Results highlight that overtourism describes an issue that is multidimensional and complex. Not only are the issues caused by tourism and nontourism stakeholders, but they should also be viewed in the context of wider societal and city developments. The article concludes by arguing that while the debate on overtourism has drawn attention again to the old problem of managing negative tourism impacts, it is not well conceptualized. Seven overtourism myths are identified that may inhibit a well-rounded understanding of the concept. To further a contextualized understanding of overtourism, the paper calls for researchers from other disciplines to engage with the topic to come to new insights.
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Although the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area in which there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if you compare it with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognise different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper we will address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally we will end with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and provide some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.
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The field of city logistics can be characterized by its many local demonstrations and trials, that are quite often not lasting longer than the trial period. The number of demonstrations that continued and were implemented in daily practice is limited. Freight partnerships proved to be a good first step to engage stakeholders. This contribution proposes a new way to develop a more action-driven form of these partnerships that follows from a solution approach, which has proved successful worldwide in fostering innovation deployment, but has not yet been applied explicitly in the domain of City Logistics: Living Labs. The living lab approach ensures that the stakeholders are involved much earlier in the in planning and implementation processes, and that the proposed city logistics implementation is revised and continuously improved to meet stakeholder needs and obtain maximum impact for a long time. This contribution summarizes the steps that have to be taken to set-up and work in a city logistics living lab (CLLL). A CLLL can be defined as a dynamic test environment where complex city logistics innovations can be implemented, following a cyclical approach, where several solutions can be experimented and re-adjusted or improved to fit the real-life city challenges. In the Horizon 2020 project CITYLAB, we developed practical guidelines for establishing and running a city logistics living lab based on several living lab- and field test methodologies that enables stakeholders to set-up and run a CLLL. This contribution discusses the most important CLLL phases, roles, and characteristics, as well as the tools that are available. Next, this contribution shows the first results of cities in which CLLLs are actually set up, or already running. © 2016 The Authors.
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Background: Falls in stroke survivors can lead to serious injuries and medical costs. Fall risk in older adults can be predicted based on gait characteristics measured in daily life. Given the different gait patterns that stroke survivors exhibit it is unclear whether a similar fall-prediction model could be used in this group. Therefore the main purpose of this study was to examine whether fall-prediction models that have been used in older adults can also be used in a population of stroke survivors, or if modifications are needed, either in the cut-off values of such models, or in the gait characteristics of interest. Methods: This study investigated gait characteristics by assessing accelerations of the lower back measured during seven consecutive days in 31 non fall-prone stroke survivors, 25 fall-prone stroke survivors, 20 neurologically intact fall-prone older adults and 30 non fall-prone older adults. We created a binary logistic regression model to assess the ability of predicting falls for each gait characteristic. We included health status and the interaction between health status (stroke survivors versus older adults) and gait characteristic in the model. Results: We found four significant interactions between gait characteristics and health status. Furthermore we found another four gait characteristics that had similar predictive capacity in both stroke survivors and older adults. Conclusion: The interactions between gait characteristics and health status indicate that gait characteristics are differently associated with fall history between stroke survivors and older adults. Thus specific models are needed to predict fall risk in stroke survivors.
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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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As people age, physiological changes affect their thermal perception, sensitivity and regulation. The ability to respond effectively to temperature fluctuations is compromised with physiological ageing, upsetting the homeostatic balance of health in some. As a result, older people can become vulnerable at extremes of thermal conditions in their environment. With population ageing worldwide, it is an imperative that there is a better understanding of older people’s thermal needs and preferences so that their comfort and wellbeing in their living environment can be optimised and healthy ageing achieved. However, the complex changes affecting the physiological layers of the individual during the ageing process, although largely inevitable, cannot be considered linear. They can happen in different stages, speeds and intensities throughout the ageing process, resulting in an older population with a great level of heterogeneity and risk. Therefore, predicting older people’s thermal requirements in an accurate way requires an in-depth investigation of their individual intrinsic differences. This paper discusses an exploratory study that collected data from 71 participants, aged 65 or above, from 57 households in South Australia, over a period of 9 months in 2019. The paper includes a preliminary evaluation of the effects of individual intrinsic characteristics such as sex, body composition, frailty and other factors, on thermal comfort. It is expected that understanding older people’s thermal comfort from the lens of these diversity-causing parameters could lead to the development of individualised thermal comfort models that fully capture the heterogeneity observed and respond directly to older people’s needs in an effective way. (article starts at page 13)
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Background: Running has become one of the most popular sports and has proven benefits for public health. Policy makers are increasingly aware that attractively designed public spaces may promote running. However, little is known about what makes a running environment attractive and restorative for runners and to what extent this depends on characteristics of the runner. This study aims to investigate 1) to what extent intrapersonal characteristics (i.e. motives and attitudes) and perceived environmental characteristics (e.g. quality of the running surface, greenness of the route, feelings of safety and hinderance by other road users) are associated with the perceived attractiveness and restorative capacity of the running environment and 2) to what extent the number of years of running experience modify these associations. Methods: Cross-sectional data were collected through the online Eindhoven Running Survey 2015 (ERS15) among half marathon runners (N = 2477; response rate 26.6%). Linear regression analyses were performed for two outcomes separately (i.e. perceived attractiveness and perceived restorative capacity of the running environment) to investigate their relations with motives and attitudes, perceived environmental characteristics and interactions between perceived environmental characteristics and number of years of running experience. Results: Perceived environmental characteristics, including green and lively routes and a comfortable running surface were more important for runners’ evaluation of the attractiveness and restorative capacity of the running environment than runners’ motives and attitudes. In contrast to experienced runners, perceived hinder from unleashed dogs and pedestrians positively impacted the attractiveness and restorative capacity for less experienced runners. Conclusions: Perceived environmental characteristics were important determinants of the attractiveness and restorative capacity of the running environment for both novice and experienced runners. However, green and lively elements in the running environment and hinderances by cars were more important for less experienced runners. In order to keep novice runners involved in running it is recommended to design comfortable running tracks and routes and provide good access to attractive, green and lively spaces.
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