Post-war urban neighbourhoods in industrialised countries have been shown to negatively affect the lifestyles of their residents due to their design. This study aims at developing an empirical procedure to select locations to be redesigned and the determinants of health at stake in these locations, with involvement of residents’ perspectives as core issue. We addressed a post-war neighbourhood in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands. We collected data from three perspectives: spatial analyses by urban designers, interviews with experts in local health and social care (n = 11) and online questionnaires filled in by residents (n = 99). These data provided input for the selection of locations to be redesigned by a multidisciplinary team (n = 16). The procedure yielded the following types of locations (and determinants): An area adjacent to a central shopping mall (social interaction, traffic safety, physical activity), a park (experiencing green, physical activity, social safety, social interaction) and a block of low-rise row houses around a public square (social safety, social interaction, traffic safety). We developed an empirical procedure for the selection of locations and determinants to be addressed, with addressing residents’ perspectives. This procedure is potentially applicable to similar neighbourhoods internationally.
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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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Comprehensive understanding of the merits of bottom-up urban development is lacking, thus hampering and complicating associated collaborative processes. Therefore, and given the assumed relevancies, we mapped the social, environmental and economic values generated by bottom-up developments in two Dutch urban areas, using theory-based evaluation principles. These evaluations raised insights into the values, beneficiaries and path dependencies between successive values, confirming the assumed effect of placemaking accelerating further spatial developments. It also revealed broader impacts of bottom-up endeavors, such as influences on local policies and innovations in urban development.
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In urban planning, 3D modeling and virtual reality (VR) provide new means for involving citizens in the planning process. For municipal government, it is essential to know how effective these means are, to justify investments. In this study, we present a case of using VR in a municipal process of civic participation concerning the redesign of a public park. The process included codesign activities and involved citizens in decision-making through a ballot, using 3D-rendered versions of competing designs. In codesign, 3D-modeling tools were instrumental in empowering citizens to negotiate design decisions, to discuss the quality of designs with experts, and to collectively take decisions. This paper demonstrates that, in a ballot on competing designs with 1302 citizens, VR headsets proved to be equally effective compared to other display technologies in informing citizens during decision making. The results of an additional, controlled experiment indicate that VR headsets provide higher engagement and more vivid memories than viewing the designs on non-immersive displays. By integrating research into a municipal process, we contribute evidence of cognitive and engagement effects of using 3D modeling and immersive VR technologies to empower citizens in participatory urban planning. The case described in the paper concerns a public park; a similar approach could be applied to the design of public installations including media architecture.
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This article analyses four of the most prominent city discourses and introduces the lens of urban vitalism as an overarching interdisciplinary concept of cities as places of transformation and change. We demonstrate the value of using urban vitalism as a lens to conceptualize and critically discuss different notions on smart, inclusive, resilient and sustainable just cities. Urban vitalism offers a process-based lens which enables us to understand cities as places of transformation and change, with people and other living beings at its core. The aim of the article is to explore how the lens of vitalism can help us understand and connect ongoing interdisciplinary academic debates about urban development and vice versa, and how these ongoing debates inform our understanding of urban vitalism.
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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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Abstract. In recent years circular economy has become more important for the development of many places including cities. Traditionally, urban development policies have mainly been aiming to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of neighbourhoods. However, technical and ecologic aspects have their effects too and need to go hand in hand. This paper is based on an urban area experiment in the Dutch city of Utrecht. In order to assess urban area developments, typically rather straight-forward quantitative indicators have been used. However, it has proved more complicated to assess multifaceted developments of the area studied in this paper. With the City Model Canvas a multi-layered model is being used to better assess the impact of the urban development being studied. Key findings include that the project studied resulted in more space for companies from the creative industry and the settlement of local ‘circular’ entrepreneurs and start-ups, although it remains unclear to what extent these benefit from each other’s presence. The increase in business activity resulted in more jobs, but it is again unclear whether this led to more social inclusion. From an environmental point of view the project activities resulted in less raw materials being used, although activities and public events bring nuisance to the surrounding neighbourhoods.
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In this short paper, we give an overview on how this major trend is unfolding and, specifically, how it affects cities. We take the following starting points: • Digitalization is a strong force that “happens” everywhere in the (urban) society. It has positive and negative effects – explored later in this paper –, which might be promoted or redressed by collective action or government intervention. Rejecting or denying it may come at high costs; • Digital technologies offer new tools and answers to address urban issues; • Digital technologies and their adoption bring a lot of new and unpredictable challenges; • Digital technologies raise several new ethical questions and dilemma’s regarding privacy, safety and security; • As in any other major societal transition, legal and institutional systems are not prepared for the digital age. Reality is always ahead of new regulation, resulting in constantly moving “grey areas” where it is unclear which rules (should) apply – think of how to deal with services like AirBnB or Uber.
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This article will explore the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) framework for urban environments, focusing on the perception, utilization and maintenance of parks. The case study explores the perception of urban flora and the value of greenery in everyday life in The Netherlands. The reflection section addresses the difference between conventional and C2C approaches to greenery on the one hand and current green management policies and public opinion on the other hand. The author reflects on how urban planning policies can be better geared towards public awareness of C2C, and towards the implementation of ecologically benign management of urban flora. It is proposed that an implementation of urban green management consistent with C2C is feasible and desirable. It is feasible given the favorable shifts in public opinion in relation to urban sustainability, and it is desirable due to the basic cost-benefit analysis and increased need for urban sustainability. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Urban Ecosystems. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-015-0468-2 https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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