Purpose: The authors provide a personal insight into how they see the potential of urban culture as a vehicle for creative placemaking. The purpose of this study is to highlight the opportunities for the tourism industry to embrace this global youth culture now that one of its pillars, breakdance, is on the brink of becoming an Olympic discipline in 2024, thus nudging this youth culture from underground to mainstream. Design/methodology/approach: The authors interviewed two Dutch pioneers in the field of urban culture: Tyrone van der Meer, founder of The Notorious IBE (IBE), an international breaking event, and Angelo Martinus, founder of the urban scene in Eindhoven and initiator of EMOVES, an urban culture and sports event. Findings: The authors illustrate the added value of urban culture to creative placemaking by addressing the initiatives of previously mentioned Dutch pioneers. Their urban culture events on Dutch soil, yearly attract thousands of participants and visitors from the urban scene, covering over 40 nationalities, to the South of The Netherlands. Originality/value: This study provides a glimpse into a global youth culture that is primarily invisible to the tourism industry and a foresight in how the tourism industry and other stakeholders (e.g. policy makers, city marketeers, tourism managers and event organisers) can pick up on this evolving trend. The study is meant as a wake-up call.
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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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Amsterdam strives to combat a shortage of homes by launching an ambitious housing development scheme for 32 designated most deprived neighborhoods. After decades of urban renewal projects, the local communities still suffer from difficult to resolve socioeconomic problems. Aside from a minimum of 40% social dwelling units, 40% of homes are reserved for the middle class and only 20% for high-end. Mixing income segments on its own will not lead to an improved socio-economic status of the inhabitants thus, a new urban renewal program has been developed. On top of that, the new progressive municipal council, intends to democratise the urban renewal processes towards more community-led developments with local support and structural solutions. Some experts may argue that we require a radical new way of planning whilst others counter, that current standardised planning procedures cannot be easily changed.In partnership with themunicipality, we reflect on Amsterdam’s urban regeneration program and enhance collective crossborder learning by organising monthly learning sessions with the managers involved. Now that thefirst phases of the planning process have been completed, we follow a Grounded Theory (GT)method to structure the collected data and analyse the perceived barriers hindering the modernisation of planning practice. Observations and promising actions to make the participation process more inclusive, interactive and influential will be discussed. One example is that some managers on the ground who have to work with the system, are taking short cuts in planning procedures to ensure that citizens’ needs are incorporated in the developed plan. These disruptiveinterventions may be used to formalise and implement new policy and more effective pathways ofcommunity-based development.
Worldwide, coral reefs are rapidly declining due to increased sea water temperatures and other environmental stresses (Figure 1). To counter the extinction of major coral reef building species on the island of Bonaire, the non-profit organization Reef Renewal Foundation Bonaire is restoring degraded reef sites using corals that are grown in local nurseries. In these nurseries, corals are propagated on artificial trees using fragmentation. After 6-8 months of growth in the nursery, the corals are transplanted to degraded reef sites around the island. Over the years more than 21.000 corals have been outplanted to reef restoration sites in this way. These corals show high survivorship under natural reef conditions but remain under threat by environmental disturbances, such as increased water temperatures, diseases, and competition with macroalgae. A promising intervention to increase reef persistence and resilience is to manipulate the coral-associated microbiome. At present, the composition of the microbiome in nursery-reared and outplanted corals on Bonaire is unknown. The aim of the current project is to identify and isolate naturally occurring beneficial bacteria that may stimulate the resilience of these corals. Our key objectives are: 1) to assess the presence of functionally beneficial bacteria in corals in nursery and restoration sites on Bonaire using metagenomic screening. 2) to design culture strategies to isolate these functionally beneficial bacteria. In the future, a selection of these beneficial bacteria can be applied to the corals to increase their resilience against environmental disturbances.
Over the last couple of years there is a growing interest in the role of the bicycle in Western urban transport systems as an alternative to car use. Cycling not only has positive environmental impacts, but also positive health effects through increased physical activity. From the observation of the Urban Intelligence team that cycling data and information was limited, we have started the development of cycleprint. Cycleprint stands for Cycle Policy Renewal and INnovation by means of tracking Technology with the objective to enable more customer friendly cycle policy.The initial objective of Cycleprint was to translate GPS data into policy relevant insights to enable customer friendly cycle policy. The online toolkit what Cycleprint has become, answers the questions about:-route choice-speeds-delays at intersections -intensities Because of the success of Cycleprint in the Netherlands the range of features is still under development. As a result of the development of Cycleprint the Dutch organized the fietstelweek. In addition to Cycleprint the Urban Intelligence team developed the cyclescan to explore the effects of cycle network enhancement. The project is developed in direct collaboration with the Provincie Noord-Brabant and Metropoolregio Eindhoven to fulfill the ambition to become cycling region of the Netherlands in 2020.
