Green Urban Solutions is de overkoepelende benaming voor innovatieve toepassingen van groen in stedelijk gebied, zoals bijvoorbeeld groene daken, groene gevels, indoor groen en specifiek ontworpen aanplant op pleinen en perken. Ondanks de vele waarden die Green Urban Solutions genereren en het brede scala aan stakeholders die hier belang bij hebben, ontbreekt het tot nog toe aan solide business modellen voor Green Urban Solutions waarin deze stakeholders gekoppeld worden aan de verschillende waarden die ze genereren. Het doel van dit onderzoek is om drie nieuwe business modellen te ontwikkelen en een advies te geven voor het betrekken van stakeholders om deze modellen te versterken en te verwezenlijken. Hiervoor is de volgende hoofdvraag opgesteld: ‘’Wat is het Nederlandse business model voor Green Urban Solutions dat de schakel vormt met de stakeholders waar ze waarde voor creëert?’’.
MULTIFILE
BACKGROUND: Consideration of older adults' quality of life (QoL) is becoming increasingly important in the evaluation, quality improvement and allocation of health and social care services. While numerous definitions and theories of QoL have been proposed, an overall synthesis of the perspective of older adults themselves is lacking.METHODS: Qualitative studies were identified in PubMed, Ebsco/Psycinfo and Ebsco/CINAHL, through a search on 28 November 2018. Articles needed to meet all of the following criteria: (i) focus on perceptions of QoL, (ii) older adults living at home as main participants, (iii) use of qualitative methodology, (iv) conducted in a Western country and (v) published in English (vi) not focused on specific patient groups. A thematic synthesis was conducted of the selected studies, using the complete 'findings/results' sections from the papers.RESULTS: We included 48 qualitative studies representing the views of more than 3,400 older adults living at home in 11 Western countries. The QoL aspects identified in the synthesis were categorized into nine QoL domains: autonomy, role and activity, health perception, relationships, attitude and adaptation, emotional comfort, spirituality, home and neighbourhood, and financial security. The results showed that although different domains can be distinguished, these are also strongly connected.CONCLUSION: QoL can be expressed in a number of domains and related subthemes that are important for older adults living at home. The findings further support that the concept of QoL should be seen as a dynamic web of intertwined domains.
Een holistisch perspectief op binnenstedelijke herontwikkeling Spatial Planning http://www.uu.nl/agenda/promotie-een-holistisch-perspectief-op-binnenstedelijke-herontwikkeling Promovendus Rien van Stigt onderzoekt waarom het moeilijk is om milieukwaliteit een prominente plaats te geven in de besluitvorming over ruimtelijke plannen. In zijn proefschrift ontwikkelt hij een holistisch perspectief op het complexe proces van compacte binnenstedelijke herontwikkeling. De kwaliteit van de stedelijke leefomgeving is essentieel in duurzame stedelijke ontwikkeling. Die kwaliteit staat met name bij compacte binnenstedelijke herontwikkeling onder druk, en daarom is milieukwaliteit een belangrijke factor in het plannen van zulke ontwikkelingen. Uit de literatuur over de integratie van milieubeleid blijkt dat dit, vooral op lagere bestuurlijke niveaus, niet altijd goed lukt. Er is nog geen overtuigende verklaring waarom dit zo is. Promotor(es): Prof.dr. P.P.J. Driessen en Prof.dr. T.J.M. Spit
Smart city technologies, including artificial intelligence and computer vision, promise to bring a higher quality of life and more efficiently managed cities. However, developers, designers, and professionals working in urban management have started to realize that implementing these technologies poses numerous ethical challenges. Policy papers now call for human and public values in tech development, ethics guidelines for trustworthy A.I., and cities for digital rights. In a democratic society, these technologies should be understandable for citizens (transparency) and open for scrutiny and critique (accountability). When implementing such public values in smart city technologies, professionals face numerous knowledge gaps. Public administrators find it difficult to translate abstract values like transparency into concrete specifications to design new services. In the private sector, developers and designers still lack a ‘design vocabulary’ and exemplary projects that can inspire them to respond to transparency and accountability demands. Finally, both the public and private sectors see a need to include the public in the development of smart city technologies but haven’t found the right methods. This proposal aims to help these professionals to develop an integrated, value-based and multi-stakeholder design approach for the ethical implementation of smart city technologies. It does so by setting up a research-through-design trajectory to develop a prototype for an ethical ‘scan car’, as a concrete and urgent example for the deployment of computer vision and algorithmic governance in public space. Three (practical) knowledge gaps will be addressed. With civil servants at municipalities, we will create methods enabling them to translate public values such as transparency into concrete specifications and evaluation criteria. With designers, we will explore methods and patterns to answer these value-based requirements. Finally, we will further develop methods to engage civil society in this processes.
A fast growing percentage (currently 75% ) of the EU population lives in urban areas, using 70% of available energy resources. In the global competition for talent, growth and investments, quality of city life and the attractiveness of cities as environments for learning, innovation, doing business and job creation, are now the key parameters for success. Therefore cities need to provide solutions to significantly increase their overall energy and resource efficiency through actions addressing the building stock, energy systems, mobility, and air quality.The European Energy Union of 2015 aims to ensure secure, affordable and climate-friendly energy for EU citizens and businesses among others, by bringing new technologies and renewed infrastructure to cut household bills, create jobs and boost growth, for achieving a sustainable, low carbon and environmentally friendly economy, putting Europe at the forefront of renewable energy production and winning the fight against global warming.However, the retail market is not functioning properly. Many household consumers have too little choices of energy suppliers and too little control over their energy costs. An unacceptably high percentage of European households cannot afford to pay their energy bills. Energy infrastructure is ageing and is not adjusted to the increased production from renewables. As a consequence there is still a need to attract investments, with the current market design and national policies not setting the right incentives and providing insufficient predictability for potential investors. With an increasing share of renewable energy sources in the coming decades, the generation of electricity/energy will change drastically from present-day centralized production by gigawatt fossil-fueled plants towards decentralized generation, in cities mostly by local household and district level RES (e.g PV, wind turbines) systems operating in the level of micro-grids. With the intermittent nature of renewable energy, grid stress is a challenge. Therefore there is a need for more flexibility in the energy system. Technology can be of great help in linking resource efficiency and flexibility in energy supply and demand with innovative, inclusive and more efficient services for citizens and businesses. To realize the European targets for further growth of renewable energy in the energy market, and to exploit both on a European and global level the expected technological opportunities in a sustainable manner, city planners, administrators, universities, entrepreneurs, citizens, and all other relevant stakeholders, need to work together and be the key moving wheel of future EU cities development.Our SolutionIn the light of such a transiting environment, the need for strategies that help cities to smartly integrate technological solutions becomes more and more apparent. Given this condition and the fact that cities can act as large-scale demonstrators of integrated solutions, and want to contribute to the socially inclusive energy and mobility transition, IRIS offers an excellent opportunity to demonstrate and replicate the cities’ great potential. For more information see the HKU Smart Citieswebsite or check out the EU-website.
Client: ERA-NET Cofund Smart Cities and Communities, JPI Urban EuropeUrban tourism generates income for cities and create opportunities for its businesses and employment for its residents. However, it can also lead to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems, thus reducing quality of life for residents and other local stakeholders and potentially leading to public discontent. This project introduces SCITHOS as a concept that consists of guidelines and tools to help cities find solutions to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible urban tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term prosperity.Within SCTHOS this is done by combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques to support policymakers and other stakeholders in generating collaborative deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. The project supports the assessment of intervention strategies based on an interactive simulation-supported multi-stakeholder approach that triggers social learning and behavior change, while stimulating shared governance and smart citizenship.Guidelines/ tools and the full concept are developed through a series of living labs and field experiments in participating cities. What is more, a Smart City Hospitality network is set up to ensure accessibility to this concept, including all tools and experiences with using them. The final results of the projects are presented 10 and 11 September 2019 in Vienna, as a pre-session to the popular annual Tourism conference (TOURMIS).
