Zoekresultaten

Public health citizen science

Citizen science – the active participation of lay people in research – may yield crucial local knowledge and increase research capacity. Recently, there is growing interest to understand benefits for citizen scientists themselves. We studied the perceived impacts of participation in a public health citizen science project on citizen scientists in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in the Netherlands. Local citizen scientists, characterised by low income and low educational level – many of whom were of migrant origin – were trained to interview fellow residents about health-enhancing and health-damaging neighbourhood features. Experiences of these citizen scientists were collected through focus groups and interviews and analysed using a theoretical model of potential citizen science benefits. The results show that the citizen scientists perceived participation in the project as a positive experience. They acquired a broader understanding of health and its determinants and knowledge about healthy lifestyles, and took action to change their own health behaviour. They reported improved self confidence and social skills, and expanded their network across cultural boundaries. Health was perceived as a topic that helped people with different backgrounds to relate to one another. The project also induced joint action to improve the neighbourhood’s health. We conclude that citizen science benefits participants with low educational or literacy level. Moreover, it seems to be a promising approach that can help promote health in underprivileged communities by strengthening personal skills and social capital. However, embedding projects in broader health promotion strategies and long-term engagement of citizen scientists should be pursued to accomplish this.

State of the art catalogue : collection of best practices on Public Space Initiatives.

Public Spaces and Urban Resilience: state of affairs in Dutch cities and exploring human and non-human perspectives

This collection of articles contains contributions to the research project ‘From Prevention to Resilience’ (FPtP). In this project, the research team has generated insights and tools for designers, policymakers, and other professionals to contribute to more resilient cities and neighborhoods. The point of departure was public space as a site for intervention, while learning from the ongoing developments revolving around the Covid-19 pandemic. During the early phases of the pandemic, governments initially focused on preventing the virus from spreading. Public spaces came to be seen as potential places for contamination. In response, fences, markings, and barrier tapes were put into place to orchestrate people’s movement and promote physical distance. With our research project, we explored the role that public space could play besides such often ad hoc preventive measures. What other challenges can public space tackle with regard to the various shocks and stressors that hit cities and neighborhoods, now and in the future? And how to tackle these challenges in an integral way? An integral approach to designing public spaces involves many disciplines, and it is to a great extent dependent on local governments’ take on public spaces. To this end, we asked relevant experts to share their disciplinary reflections on a design perspective we have developed in the FPtP project, called Human / Non-Human Public Spaces. An earlier version of this design perspective was handed over to experts to provide feedback from an urban climate adaptation perspective and from a governance and cultural change perspective. Stephanie Erwin and Jeroen Kluck provide concrete feedback on the design perspective and offer a discussion in relation to the field of urban climate resilience. Alex Straathof offers an essayistic text in which he reflects on some of the key notions of the design perspective, reflecting on some of the key notions of the design perspective based on cultural theory and his experience with interventions on the neighborhood level. In parallel, we commissioned two independent experts in the field of spatial development and governance to make a preliminary analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on the government perspectives on public spaces. Both experts were given the same question, but they applied different methods. Hugo Verschoor Plug conducted an analysis on two national policy documents and six ‘omgevingsvisies’ – i.e., strategies on spatial planning and the environment – of large and middle-sized cities: Amsterdam, Breda, The Hague, Groningen, Rotterdam and Zwolle. Denise Vrolijk was asked to interview professionals from a cross-section of Dutch Cities in order to obtain their perspectives on how local governments viewed the role of public spaces in relation to resilience. Together, these analyses provide an overview of the current state of affairs in public space and urban resilience. We thank the authors for sharing their expertise and insights and thereby contribute to the FPtR project. This project is funded by The Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMw), part of the subsidy round ‘COVID 19: Maatschappelijke Dynamiek’, project nr. 10430032010029.

Experiencing the future: Evaluating a new framework for the participatory co-design of healthy public spaces using immersive virtual reality

Urban densification is promoted for sustainable urban growth, yet it also generates concerns about negative health impacts on local citizens. Engaging local citizens in the co-design of densification projects is therefore crucial to address their needs and concerns. The use of immersive Virtual Reality (VR) technologies creates potential for advancing the participatory co-design of healthier urban spaces by allowing citizens to not only visualize but also experience the impacts of future designs or “what-if” scenarios. Theoretically grounded in an extended version of Sheppard's approach, which we call the Experiencing the Future Framework (EFF), we developed a study to create and evaluate an immersive VR application called CoHeSIVE. This application was designed to facilitate participatory co-design processes for healthy public spaces. CoHeSIVE, as the technological manifestation of our framework, was created through iterative workshops with end-user input. During the final workshop with 41 participants, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected, including user behavior and experiences with CoHeSIVE, especially regarding its experiential and interactive components. The vast majority of participants had positive experiences and recommended CoHeSIVE for participatory co-design processes. Participants felt confident in their design outcomes and found the user interface easy to use and effective for making and communicating design decisions. The most preferred design attributes were found to be many and clustered trees, several benches, large grass areas, high-rise buildings, more lampposts and the presence of a fountain, showing that the design outcomes were meaningful for the selected local context. Future enhancements of CoHeSIVE might include adding more design attributes, enhancing visual representations, adding multi-user capabilities, integrating generative AI and expanding CoHeSIVE's applicability to other contexts.

Our city? Countering exclusion in public space

It’s no secret that cities are booming. They continue to attract the world’s top talent, stimulate the economy, act as hubs of innovation, and remain the cultural melting pots of all nations. Yet, we must ask the question, do the inhabitants of our ever-popular cities really feel at home in them? Furthermore, are the public places within a city really even ours?

Challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and design responses in public space: Towards strategies for resilient post-Covid cities

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered governments and designers to revalue and redesign public spaces. This paper focuses on the various design responses to Covid-19 proposed and implemented in public spaces. In particular, we identify the kinds of challenges that such design responses address and the strategies that they use. We selected 56 design examples, largely collected from internet sources. By analyzing the design examples we identified five Covid-related challenges that were addressed in public space: sustaining amenities, keeping a distance, feeling connected, staying mentally healthy, and expanding health infrastructures. For each challenge, we articulated 2 to 6 design strategies. The challenges highlight the potential of public space to contribute to more resilient cities during times of pandemic, also in the future. The design strategies show the possible ways in which this potential can be fulfilled. In our next steps, we will use our findings to develop a program of possibilities; this program will contain a wide range of design strategies for responding to future pandemics and will be made publically accessible in an online database. The program contributes to more resilient post-Covid cities, by offering a variety of possibilities for coping with, and adapting to, pandemic-related shocks and stressors.