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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In recent years, it has become a commonplace to argue that cities should be the focus point of sustainable development. Various authors have presented a variety of arguments why cities should be the preferred target to foster sustainable development-focused innovation; - The average consumption of resources of urban dwellers is higher. - The population of cities is growing continuously, while rural populations stabilize. - Deteriorating living conditions and segregation in cities caused by processes of gentrification of traditional neighbourhoods that drive out lower income groups to the suburbs. - Cities are ‘concentrated’ emitters of pollutants and therefore solutions and re-use might be easier to implement. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11185013 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karel-mulder-163aa96/
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Urban regions are confronted with huge sustainability challenges. Their future depends to a large extent on our ability to promote sustainable urban development. However, sustainability challenges in cities are inherently complex and need integrated, multidisciplinary solutions. This textbook on Smart Sustainable Cities responds to that challenge by capturing theories, methods and tools relevant for researching smart sustainable cities and developing solutions for sustainability challenges within cities. This book thereby serves the great need among students and practitioners to understand the multifaceted nature of Smart Sustainable Cities, to build upon acknowledged cross-disciplinary analytical and design approaches, and to learn how to apply such approaches. Each chapter presents a practical approach to urban sustainability, a relevant case study, and exercises and assignments for students to master the topic. Topics include: Smart Sustainable Cities: an introduction; Systemic Design Thinking; Probing the Future for Smart Sustainable Cities; Social Design of Smart Sustainable Cities; Urban Psychology of Smart Sustainable Cities; Behavioural Change for Smart Sustainable Cities; Healthy Urban Living; Towards Energy Neutral Neighbourhoods; Carbon Footprinting and Accounting; Circular Economy: material and value flows in the city; Promoting Sustainable Urban Mobility; Canvas Business Modelling; Big Data Analytics; Social Value Innovation: from concept to practice.
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Sustainable urban mobility is an established target of policy making and planning in Europe. It is associated with, among others, better air quality, less noise disturbance, increased safety and quality of public space. In this regard, one of the EU Commission’s main tools to achieve sustainable urban mobility, through Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP), require the explicit integration of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Yet, European cities face common barriers when it comes to materialising M&E in practice. To avoid or overcome these barriers, this paper argues for integrating Capacity Building (CB). We draw this conclusion based on experiences made during the M&E and CB of the Horizon 2020 Project ‘Metamorphosis’. We report our experiences, rating different monitoring indicators used for the evaluation of measures transforming car-oriented neighbourhoods into children-friendly neighbourhoods in seven European cities. We then give advice on how to design and integrate CB for a feasible M&E scheme.
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From the list of content: " Smart sustainable cities & higher education, Essence: what, why & how? Developing learning materials together; The blended learning environment; Teaching on entrepreneurship; Utrecht municipality as a client; International results; Studentexperiences; International relations; City projects in Turku, Alcoy and Utrecht ".
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The current COVID-19 pandemic confines people to their homes, disrupting the fragile social fabric of deprived neighbourhoods and citizen’s participation options. In deprived neighbourhoods, community engagement is central in building community resilience, an important resource for health and a prerequisite for effective health promotion programmes. It provides access to vulnerable groups and helps understand experiences, assets, needs and problems of citizens. Most importantly, community activities, including social support, primary care or improving urban space, enhance health through empowerment, strengthened social networks, mutual respect and providing a sense of purpose and meaning. In the context of inequalities associated with COVID-19, these aspects are crucial for citizens of deprived neighbourhoods who often feel their needs and priorities are ignored. In this perspectives paper, illustrated by a varied overview of community actions in the UK and The Netherlands, we demonstrate how citizens, communities and organizations may build resilience and community power. Based on in-depth discussion among the authors we distilled six features of community actions: increase in mutual aid and neighbourhood ties, the central role of community-based organizations (CBOs), changing patterns of volunteering, use of digital media and health promotion opportunities. We argue that in order to enable and sustain resilient and confident, ‘disaster-proof’, communities, areas which merit investment include supporting active citizens, new (digital) ways of community engagement, transforming formal organizations, alignment with the (local) context and applying knowledge in the field of health promotion in new ways, focussing on learning and co-creation with citizen initiatives.
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It is essential to consider the social context when designing sustainable energy systems that lead to successful implementation in neighbourhoods. Current methods often only consider techno-economic aspects and are insufficiently capable of including social factors, because they are unclear about which social factors are relevant and how they can be quantified. This paper explores how neighbourhoods can be characterized socially by studying pre-existing neighbourhood characteristics, focussed on socio-economic status and social cohesion. The paper is built around four case-studies in the Netherlands, which are analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The paper shows how the social context can be defined by 1) proposing a theoretical framework of social factors, 2) quantifying these social factors by survey research, 3) interpretating this data using qualitative casestudy data and 4) quantifying success in the cases and relating this to the scores of the survey data. The results of this explorative study will 1) show how a social profile can be used to find leads for a participative approach towards sustainable neighbourhoods where techno-economic solutions are well embedded in the social context and 2) help to understand and predict success of participation in communities.
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In ESSENCE (European Sustainable Solutions for Existing and New City Environments) "five European Higher Education Institutions and three municipalities worked together to train future professionals to overcome the complex challenges of achieving smart sustainable cities. Students worked on behalf of the three local governments on useful solutions to sustainability issues in the urban environment. New teaching methods were applied, such as blended learning and creative solution searching methods. "
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This book contains the abstracts to the sessions presented at the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning conference in 2022. The conference was made up of four tracks: social inclusion; urban agriculture; urban planning, design and development; food governance.
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