In this article, Isaac argues that since 1948, Israel's control of water resources has been the result of military actions that forced between 700,000 and 800,000 Palestinians into exile and claimed the most fertile part of the disputed territory for the state. It thereby paved the way for subsequent military occupation. Isaac maintains that the Israeli occupation has violated the Palestinian right to the equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. In his view, from the end of the 1967 war, Israel initiated its occupation of the territories of Palestine and quickly imposed military order with a view to achieving full control over land and water resources. To Isaac, these military orders served to dissolve the pre-1967 legal systems and which consisted of Ottoman, British, Jordanian (West Bank) and Egyptian (Gaza Strip) laws. This critical review article concentrates on the concept of justice tourism as a response to these assumed Israeli violations of Palestinian rights to equitable and reasonable utilization of shared water resources. The article sheds light on why and how justice tourism conceivably contributes to the Palestine host communities' transformation and hence to the development of higher level self-consciousness about their rights as "a sovereign nation".
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Reducing energy consumption in urban households is essential for reaching the necessary climate research and policy targets for CO2 reduction and sustainability. The dominant approach has been to invest in technological innovations that increase household energy efficiency. This article moves beyond this approach, first by emphasising the need to prioritise reducing energy demand over increasing energy efficiency and, second, by addressing the challenge of energy consumption at the level of the community, not the individual household. It argues that energy consumption is shaped in and by social communities, which construct consciousness of the energy implications of lifestyle choices. By analysing a specific type of community, a digital community, it looks at the role that communication on online discussion boards plays in the social process of questioning energy needs and shaping a “decent lifestyle”. The article explores three social processes of community interaction around energy practices – coercive, mimetic, and normative – questioning the ways in which they contribute to the activation of energy discursive consciousness. In conclusion, the article reflects on the potential implications of these social processes for future research and interventions aimed at reducing energy demand. To illustrate how the three selected social processes influence one another, the article builds on the results of a research project conducted in Amsterdam, analysing the potential contribution of online discussion boards in shaping energy norms in the Sustainable Community of Amsterdam Facebook group.
The development of ‘age-friendly cities’ has become a major area of work in the field of ageing and the built environment. This movement is driven by the observation that cities are home to an ever-increasing ageing population. Over the past decade, a multitude of age-friendly initiatives have been developed with the aim of making physical and social environments more favourable for older people's well-being, health and ability to live in the community. This article explores ten key questions associated with the age-friendly cities and communities' movement, with a particular focus on the built environment. It provides an overview of the history of the age-friendly cities' movement and the underlying models, the aspects of the built environment that are relevant for age-friendly cities, the ways age-friendliness can be evaluated, and the interactions between age-friendly cities initiatives and other strategic agendas such as smart cities. The paper concludes by discussing future perspectives and possible directions for further development of the age-friendly movement. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107922 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jvhoof1980/
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Supermarkets are essential urban household amenities, providing daily products, and for their social role in communities. Contrary to many other countries, including nearby ones, the Netherlands have a balanced distribution of supermarkets across villages and urban neighbourhoods. However, spatial supermarket patterns, are subject to influential developments. First, due to economies of scale, there is a tendency for supermarkets to increase their catchment areas and to disappear from peripheral villages. Second, supermarkets are now mainly located in residential areas, although the urban periphery appears to be attractive for the retail sector, perhaps including the rise of hypermarkets. Third, today, online grocery shopping is still lagging far behind on other online shopping products, but a breaks through will dilute population support for in-store supermarkets and can lead to dramatic ‘game changer’ shifts with major spatial and social effects. These three important trends will reinforce each other. Consequences are of natural community meeting places at the expense of social cohesion; reduced accessibility for daily products, leading to more travel, often by car; increasing delivery flows; real estate vacancies, and increasing suburban demand increase for retail and logistics. Expected changes in supermarket patterns require understanding, but academic literature on OGS is still scarce, and does hardly address household behaviour in changing spatial constellations. We develop likely spatial supermarket patterns, and model the consequences for travel demand, social cohesion and real estate demand, as well as the distribution between online and in-store grocery shopping, by developing a stated preference experiment, among Dutch households.
The population in rural areas in the northern provinces are aging in a much higher pace than in other parts of the Netherlands. Many young and higher educated citizens move out of these provinces. Quality of life in rural villages decreases likewise and the inhabitants that stay behind are more vulnerable, with lower income and educational levels. Recent decentralization policies put a larger burden on local constituencies to guarantee the quality of the living environment but a lot of them lack sufficient knowledge and capacity to tackle this complex issue.The initiators of this application have joined their knowledge and experience to put together a consortium with the aim to support these smaller constituencies in rural areas in the three northern provinces with a new and innovative methodology: the GO! approach. This approach was developed in the neigborhoods of Utrecht municipality and will be used for the first time in rural communities with a comparable size .This approach consists of the following steps:• First to identify possibilities to create a healthier living environment by analyzing available data on pollution, spatial layout and social cohesion.• To discuss the result of this analysis with local citizens and other local stakeholders in order to link the data with local experiences• To prioritize into major themes as a result of the combination of all this available information.• To link these major themes to combinations effective measures available from RIVM and international databases.• To present these combinations to the local government, their citizens and other local stakeholders in order to let them choose for an effective approach and inplemant it together in order to create a local healthier living environment.The GO! approach will provide local citizens and professionals with the necessary tools and knowledge to work jointly and effectively to realize a healthier living environment. The project partners that jointly started the consortium will put in effort during this first year to build and formalize the consortium and to make arrangements with several constituencies in the three northers provinces to formulate their own specific knowledge agenda as a basis for concrete project proposals in the second stage to be implemented with the support of the formalized consortium.
The main aim of KiNESIS is to create a Knowledge Alliance among academia, NGOs, communities, local authorities, businesses to develop a program of multidisciplinary activities in shrinking areas with the aim of promoting and fostering ideas, projects, workforce, productivity and attractiveness. The problems affecting peripheral territories in rural or mountain areas of the interior regions, compared to small, medium or large population centres and large European capitals, are related to complex but clear phenomena: the emigration of young generations, abandonment and loneliness of elderly people, the loss of jobs, the deterioration of buildings and land, the closing of schools and related services, the disappearance of traditions and customs, the contraction of local governments, which in absence of adequate solutions can only generate worse conditions, leading to the abandonment of areas rich in history, culture and traditions. It is important that these communities - spread all over Europe - are not abandoned since they are rich in cultural traditions, which need to be preserved with a view to new developments, intended as "intelligent" rebirth and recovery.The focus of KiNESIS is to converge the interest of different stakeholders by recalling various skills around abandoned villages to make them "smart" and "attractive".Keeping in mind the triangular objectives of cooperation and innovation of research, higher education and business of the Knowledge Alliance action, the project aims are: i) revitalising depopulated areas by stimulating entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills; ii) creating local living laboratories, shared at European level, in which the exchange of knowledge, best practices, experiences can help promote social inclusion and entrepreneurial development;iii) experimenting new, innovative and multidisciplinary approaches in teaching and learning; iv) facilitating the exchange, flow and co-creation of knowledge at a local and global level.
