The future of age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC) needs to adapt and be more agile to the changing needs of residents of all ages. The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing ‘the Decade' provides a unique opportunity to further strengthen age-friendly environments. The Decade brings together governments, civil society, international agencies, professionals, academics, the media and the private sector for 10 years of concerted action to improve the lives of older people, their families and the communities in which they live. This editorial serves as a thought piece and outlines recommendations for the imminent and future discourse surrounding digital transformation, digital skills/literacy and financial implications on societal citizens in the AFCC discourse. Action is needed now, and this can only be achieved by talking openly about the real issues and concerns affecting people in our communities and in the future.
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The Utrecht SBE16 Conference. From the introduction: "The conference is part of the Sustainable Built conference series and is as such considered to be part of the pre-eminent international conference series on sustainable building and construction endorsed by iiSBE, UNEP-SBO and FIDIC. The Utrecht SBE16 conference is hosted by the Centre of Expertise Smart Sustainable Cities of HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, in partnership with six Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences (Avans, Saxion, Rotterdam, The Hague, Zuyd, InHolland) and the Utrecht Sustainability Institute (USI). The Transition Zero conference provides us with a unique opportunity to meet transition professionals in urban sustainability from all over Europe and beyond and to learn about the latest developments and best (inter)national practices in urban sustainability. The rich interest in the conference, made it possible to offer research as well as practitioner-driven tracks on topics related to the conference title. The conference brought together excellent future-minded practitioners, researchers and thought leaders from the R&I community, specialists and professionals on zero energy homes and transition of the built environment."
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Objectives: Promoting unstructured outside play is a promising vehicle to increase children’s physical activity (PA). This study investigates if factors of the social environment moderate the relationship between the perceived physical environment and outside play. Study design: 1875 parents from the KOALA Birth Cohort Study reported on their child’s outside play around age five years, and 1516 parents around age seven years. Linear mixed model analyses were performed to evaluate (moderating) relationships among factors of the social environment (parenting influences and social capital), the perceived physical environment, and outside play at age five and seven. Season was entered as a random factor in these analyses. Results: Accessibility of PA facilities, positive parental attitude towards PA and social capital were associated with more outside play, while parental concern and restriction of screen time were related with less outside play. We found two significant interactions; both involving parent perceived responsibility towards child PA participation. Conclusion: Although we found a limited number of interactions, this study demonstrated that the impact of the perceived physical environment may differ across levels of parent responsibility.
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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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This entry begins by reviewing the definitions of “human”, “environment” and “dichotomy”, consequently turning to the debates concerning the human–environment relationship. Synthesizing various studies, the capability of advanced tool use; language, hyper-sociality, advanced cognition, morality, civilization, technology, and free will are supposed to be distinctly human. However, other studies describe how nonhuman organisms share these same abilities. The biophysical or natural environment is often associated with all living and non-living things that occur naturally. The environment also refers to ecosystems or habitats, including all living organisms or species. The concepts of the biophysical or natural environment are often opposed to the concepts of built or modified environment, which is artificial - constructed or influenced by humans. The built or modified environment typically refers to structures or spaces from gardens to car parks. Today, one of the central questions in regard to human-environment dichotomies centres around the concept of sustainability. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/book/10.1002/9781118924396 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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Quality of life serves a reference against which you can measure the various domains of your own life or that of other individuals, and that can change over time. This definition of the World Health Organization encompasses many elements of daily living, including features of the individual and the environment around us, which can either be the social environment, the built environment, or other environmental aspects. This is one of the rationales for the special issue on “Quality of Life: The Interplay between Human Behaviour, Technology and the Environment”. This special issue is a joint project by the Centre of Expertise Health Innovation of the Hague University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. The main focus of this Special Issue is how optimising the interplay between people, the environment, and technology can enhance people’s quality of life. The focus of the contributions in this special issue is on the person or end‐user and his or her environment, both the physical, social, and digital environment, and on the interaction between (1) people, (2) health, care, and systems, and (3) technology. Recent advances in technology offer a wide range of solutions that support a healthy lifestyle, good quality of life, and effective and efficient healthcare processes, for a large number of end‐users, both patients/clients from minus 9 months until 100+ years of age, as well as practitioners/physicians. The design of new services and products is at the roots of serving the quality of life of people. Original article at MDPI; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16245106 (Editorial of Special Issue with the same title: "Quality of Life: The Interplay between Human Behaviour, Technology and the Environment")
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Nowadays companies need higher educated engineers to develop their competences to enable them to innovate. This innovation competence is seen as a remedy for the minor profitable business they do during the financial crises. Innovation is an element to be developed on the one hand for big companies as well as for small-and-medium sized companies through Europe to overcome this crisis. The higher education can be seen as an institution where youngsters, coming from secondary schools, who choose to learn at higher education to realize their dream, what they like to become in the professional world. The tasks of the Universities of applied Sciences are to prepare these youngsters to become starting engineers doing their job well in the companies. Companies work for a market, trying to manufacture products which customers are willing to pay for. They ask competent employees helping achieving this goal. It is important these companies inform the Universities of applied Sciences in order to modify their educational program in such a way that the graduated engineers are learning the latest knowledge and techniques, which they need to know doing their job well. The Universities of applied Sciences of Oulu (Finland) and Fontys Eindhoven (The Netherlands) are working together to experience possibilities to qualify their students on innovation development in an international setting. In the so-called: ‘Invention Project’, students are motivated to find their own invention, to design it, to prepare this idea for prototyping and to really manufacture it. Organizing the project, special attention is given to communication protocol between students and also between teachers. Students have meetings on Thursday every week through Internet connection with the communication program OPTIMA, which is provided by the Oulu University. Not only the time difference between Finland and the Netherlands is an issue to be organized also effective protocols how to provide each other relevant information and also how to make in an effective way decisions are issues. In the paper the writers will present opinions of students, teachers and also companies in both regions of Oulu and Eindhoven on the effectiveness of this project reaching the goal students get more experienced to set up innovative projects in an international setting. The writers think this is an important and needed competence for nowadays young engineers to be able to create lucrative inventions for companies where they are going to work for. In the paper the writers also present the experiences of the supervising conditions during the project. The information found will lead to success-factors and do’s and don’ts for future projects with international collaboration.
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The international classroom is presumably a far more effective learning environment for the acquisition of intercultural competence when students receive adequate training to make the most of their intercultural encounters. This paper provides a summary of the intercultural training taught to first-year students of an international programme in The Hague University of Applied Sciences. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how the students respond to this intercultural training as well as what signs of intercultural awareness they show after completing the course. The findings were obtained via qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, observations and student homework assignments. Overall, students evaluate the training positively. Furthermore, students show some awareness of the necessary ingredients for effective intercultural communication in the international classroom as well as of the challenging nature of this communication due to cultural diversity. Finally, this paper provides recommendations from the facilitators on stimulating intercultural learning in the international classroom.
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The coronavirus pandemic highlighted the vital role urban areas play in supporting citizens’ health and well-being (Ribeiro et al., 2021). In times of (personal) vulnerability, citizens depend on their neighbourhood for performing daily physical activities to restore their mental state, but public spaces currently fall short in fulfilling the appropriate requirements to achieve this. The situation is exacerbated by Western ambitions to densify through high-rise developments to meet the housing demand. In this process of urban densification, public spaces are the carriers where global trends, local ambitions and the conditions for the social fabric materialise (Battisto & Wilhelm, 2020). High-rise developments in particular will determine users’ experiences at street-level. Consequently, they have an enduring influence on the liveability of neighbourhoods for the coming decades but, regarding the application of urban design principles, their impact is hard to dissect (Gifford, 2007).Promising emerging technologies and methods from the new transdisciplinary field of neuroarchitecture may help identify and monitor the impact of certain physical characteristics on human well-being in an evidence-based way. In the two-year Sensing Streetscapes research study, biometric tools were tested in triangulation with traditional methods of surveys and expert panels. The study unearthed situational evidence of the relationship between designed and perceived spaces by investigating the visual properties and experience of high-density environments in six major Western cities. Biometric technologies—Eye-Tracking, Galvanic Skin Response, mouse movement software and sound recording—were applied in a series of four laboratory tests (see Spanjar & Suurenbroek, 2020) and one outdoor test (see Hollander et al., 2021). The main aim was to measure the effects of applied design principles on users’ experiences, arousal levels and appreciation.Unintentionally, the research study implied the creation of a 360° built-environment assessment tool. The assessment tool enables researchers and planners to analyse (high-density) urban developments and, in particular, the architectural attributes that (subliminally) affect users’ experience, influencing their behaviour and perception of place. The tool opens new opportunities for research and planning practice to deconstruct the successes of existing high-density developments and apply the lessons learned for a more advanced, evidence-based promotion of human health and well-being.ReferencesBattisto, D., & Wilhelm, J. J. (Eds.). (2020). Architecture and Health Guiding Principles for Practice. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Gifford, R. (2007). The Consequences of Living in High-Rise Buildings. Architectural Science Review, 50(1), 2–17. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3763/asre.2007.5002 Hollander, J. B., Spanjar, G., Sussman, A., Suurenbroek, F., & Wang, M. (2021). Programming for the subliminal brain: biometric tools reveal architecture’s biological impact. In K. Menezes, P. de Oliveira-Smith, & A. V. Woodworth (Eds.), Programming for Health and Wellbeing in Architecture (pp. 136–149). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003164418 Ribeiro, A. I., Triguero-Mas, M., Jardim Santos, C., Gómez-Nieto, A., Cole, H., Anguelovski, I., Silva, F. M., & Baró, F. (2021). Exposure to nature and mental health outcomes during COVID-19 lockdown. A comparison between Portugal and Spain. Environment International, 154, 106664. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2021.106664 Spanjar, G., & Suurenbroek, F. (2020). Eye-Tracking the City: Matching the Design of Streetscapes in High-Rise Environments with Users’ Visual Experiences. Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture (JoDLA), 5(2020), 374–385. https://gispoint.de/gisopen-paper/6344-eye-tracking-the-city-matching-the-design-of-streetscapes-in-high-rise-environments-with-users-visual-experiences.html?IDjournalTitle=6
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Efforts to create age-friendly cities progressively intersect with goals for environmental sustainability. The older people’s beliefs, behaviours and financial aspects regarding environmental sustainability in their lives are an understudied topic and not well understood. Therefore, a representative survey was conducted using the psychometrically sound and comprehensive SustainABLE-16 Questionnaire. A total of 388 respondents, who were community-dwelling older people in The Hague, filled out the survey completely. Overall, the mean scores on the SustainABLE-16 for finance- and environment-driven pro-environmental behaviours, beliefs and the financial position among older people were positive for all districts of The Hague. Using the outcomes of the survey, a total of six unique typologies were identified through a two-step process combining hierarchical and k-means cluster analyses. These six typologies are 1 the staunch non-believers, 2 the finance-driven non-believers, 3 the everyday individuals, 4 belief-driven people with limited financial resources, 5 believing non-responders, 6 the affluent and engaging people. These six typologies each require different approaches from policymakers. Sustainabilityrelated policies should ideally focus on groups with high scores for pro-environmental behaviours but who have shortcomings in knowledge how to improve one’s everyday lifestyle and groups who lack the necessary financial means to live a more sustainable life.
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