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Global climate change will result in more extreme heat, drought, and rainfall. The urban environment is particularly vulnerable to these effects. Adaptation to these extreme weather conditions is difficult due to the high complexity of urban land-use patterns and stakeholder configurations. The current practice in the field of urban climate adaptation mainly revolves around the assessment of climatological risks, leaving the question where measures can be implemented under-researched. This study proposes and tests a four-step GIS-based Decision Support Model (DSM) to map the spatial opportunities for adaptation measures in public and private spaces. The DSM was applied to the city of Groningen. The findings revealed that there is a relationship between urban design, climatological risks, and opportunities for adaptation measures, with higher density neighbourhoods showing more opportunities for greening private properties and permeable pavements and lower density neighbourhoods showing opportunities for the implementation of green-blue measures in public space. The application of this DSM can aid urban planners and other stakeholders in mapping spatial opportunities for climate adaptation, that is, allow for more precise site selection for adaptation efforts and for an evaluation of adaptation efforts in different neighbourhood typologies within the urban environment.

Studies on university campuses public spaces have recognized that there is a significant relationship between the built environment and people’s perceptions of creativity. There is, however, little empirical evidence to support this claim. This research quantifies and measures this relationship, defined as ‘spatial affordances for creativity’, using two types of Dutch university campuses as case studies: inner-city campuses and science parks (SPs). This study found statistical associations that locations of built environment features influenced creativity between people. Moreover, spatial affordances for creativity must be considered in the planning and design of campuses, as a suite of spatial and perceptual conditions.

Engaging in social interaction and physical movement during everyday activities has a positive influence on wellbeing in later life. For older adults who age in place, the majority of activities occur indoors, yet studies typically focus on outdoors. Gender influences social and physical activities but is understudied in an ageing-in-place context. We aim to address these gaps by increasing insight into the indoor activities in later life, with a focus on gender differences in social interaction and physical movement. Through a mixed-methods approach, data were collected using global positioning system (GPS) trackers, pedometers and activity diaries. Twenty community-dwelling older adults (11 women and 9 men) who were living in Lancashire collected these data over seven days. An exploratory spatio-temporal analysis was conducted on the 820 activities they undertook. We discovered that our participants spend large amounts of time indoors. We also found that social interaction increases the duration of the activity and, conversely, decreases levels of physical movement. When zooming in to gender differences, men's activities took significantly longer than women's activities and were characterised by higher level of social interaction. Based on these results, we argue that there is a trade-off between social interaction and physical movement in everyday activities. We suggest establishing a balance between socialising and moving in everyday activities in later life, specifically because maintaining high levels of movement and social interaction at the same time seems unachievable. In conclusion, it is important to design indoor environments that facilitate choice between being active and resting, and between being social and being on one's own rather than assume they are mutually-exclusive and/or universally “good” or “bad” per se.

Political-administrative reorganizations are often underpinned by spatial and historical narratives to tap into people's sense of place and, this way, justify the new territories. Using a mixed-methods study of the recently amalgamated municipality Het Hogeland (Netherlands), we studied how sense of place is politically mobilized and in what sense this corresponds with residents' associations with their living environment. While inter-municipal collaboration had an administrative-jurisdictional logic, during the merger preparation, Het Hogeland mobilized the residents' sense of place through references to the area's landscape, its vernacular name and music. It also devised a participatory process involving citizen panels, polls and civil society input. Resident respondents showed strong merger support, and we found similarities between their sense of place and the municipality's marketing. We conclude that political strategies that mobilize locally embedded socio-cultural narratives and add co-constructive elements can bridge the gap between citizen and politics that regularly occurs following territorial reorganizations. ispartof: Regional and Federal Studies pages:1-23 status: Published online

Background: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the world's highest maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality and has shown the slowest progress in reducing them. In addition, there is substantial inequality in terms of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in the region. Geospatial studies can help prioritize scarce resources by pinpointing priority areas for implementation. This systematic review was conducted to explore the application of geospatial analysis to maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in SSA.Methods: A systematic search of PubMed, SCOPUS, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases was performed. All observational and qualitative studies that reported on maternal or neonatal health outcomes were included if they used a spatial analysis technique and were conducted in a SSA country. After removing duplicates, two reviewers independently reviewed each study's abstract and full text for inclusion. Furthermore, the quality of the studies was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklists. Finally, due to the heterogeneity of studies, narrative synthesis was used to summarize the main findings, and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline was strictly followed to report the review results. A total of 56 studies were included in the review.Results: We found that geospatial analysis was used to identify inequalities in maternal and neonatal morbidity, mortality, and health care utilization and to identify gaps in the availability and geographic accessibility of maternal health facilities. In addition, we identified a few studies that used geospatial analysis for modelling intervention areas. We also detected challenges and shortcomings, such as unrealistic assumptions used by geospatial models and a shortage of reliable, up-to-date, small-scale georeferenced data.Conclusions: The use of geospatial analysis for maternal and neonatal health in SSA is still limited, and more detailed spatial data are required to exploit the potential of geospatial technologies fully.

AbstractThis study considers how socio-demographic characteristics, mobility situation and attitudes explain current and potential e-bike use in rural areas. Due to longer distances between travel destinations, rural areas in most western societies are characterized by a high car dependence and low use of active modes like walking and cycling. Developing e-bike mobility in these areas can support more healthy and sustainable rural mobility. A large-scale mobility survey conducted among rural residents in the northern parts of the Netherlands provides insight in the determinants of current and potential e-bike use in rural areas. The participant characteristics show that in rural areas also, the e-bike is already used among a broad population of varied ages and backgrounds and for different purposes. Among respondents who did not own an e-bike, especially those with lower socioeconomic status and a household with children showed more willingness to use an e-bike in the future. No evidence was found for current or potential substitution of public transport use. Current e-bike users less likely use a car or regular bicycle as their primary mode of transport. Those who are willing to use an e-bike are less likely to currently use a regular bicycle as their main mode of transport. These findings suggest that the e-bike can substitute both car and bicycle use to some extent. However, bicycle users seem more reluctant towards owning or adopting an e-bike than car users, suggesting greater potential for a shift away from car travel. Furthermore, current and potential e-bike users hold more positive attitudes toward different aspects of e-bike travel than non-users. This provides impetus for future actions to further encourage e-bike use.

This paper investigates how socio-spatial aspects of creativity, operationalized as the causal relations between the built environment and perceived creativity in university campuses’ public spaces, are currently applied in practice. Moreover, it discusses practitioners’ perceptions regarding research-generated evidence on socio-spatial aspects of creativity according to three effectiveness aspects: credibility, relevance, and applicability. The “research-generated evidence” is herein derived from data-driven knowledge generated by multi-disciplinary methodologies (e.g., self-reported perceptions, participatory tools, geospatial analysis, observations). Through a thematic analysis of interviews with practitioners involved in the (re)development of campuses public spaces of inner-city campuses and science parks in Amsterdam, Utrecht, and Groningen. We concluded that socio-spatial aspects of creativity concepts were addressed only at the decision-making level for Utrecht Science Park. Correspondingly, while presented evidence was considered by most practitioners as relevant for practice, perceptions of credibility and applicability vary according to institutional goals, practitioners’ habits in practice, and their involvement in projects’ roles and phases. The newfound interrelationships between the three effectiveness aspects highlighted (a) the institutional fragmentation issues in campuses and public spaces projects, (b) the research-practice gap related to such projects, which occur beyond the university campuses’ context, and (c) insights on the relationship between evidence generated through research-based data-driven knowledge and urban planning practice, policy, and governance related to knowledge environments. We concluded that if research-generated evidence on socio-spatial aspects of creativity is to be integrated into the evidence-based practice of campuses’ public spaces, an alignment between researchers, multiple actors involved, policy framing, and goal achievements are fundamental.

Even though the societal and academic attention to geoparks is on the rise, there is a distinct absence of studies on communities and their perceptions of the landscapes institutionalized by geoparks. This paper contributes to the geopark literature by problematizing the geographical awareness, landscape associations and territorial identities of geopark inhabitants. Using a quantitative case study of UNESCO Geopark De Hondsrug (the Netherlands), the paper shows a complex image regarding the inhabitants' affinity with their living environment. At its initiation, the geopark did not build on the landscape associations of local inhabitants. Composite overlap mapping of mental maps drawn by inhabitants shows that the geopark incorporates an area that is substantially larger than the area interpreted by the inhabitants as constituting the Hondsrug. Nevertheless, the core area of the Hondsrug is recognized and lived by the majority of the people, providing a starting point for improving the community's support for the geopark's brand. We conclude that only when there is enough bottom-up recognition and embedding of the brand and its underlying landscape values, a geopark's narrative can be effectively built on for endogenous regional development purposes. ispartof: Applied Geography vol:106 pages:1-10 status: published

The success of university campuses depends on the interrelations between creative encounters and the built environment, conceptualised here as spatial affordances for creativity. Such an interface plays a fundamental role in interactions for knowledge sharing and the exchange of ideas on campus. Due to campus public spaces generally being considered as the leftovers between buildings and classrooms, undermanaged, and overlooked, little is known about the extent to which this built environment enables or inhibits creative encounters in such spaces. The inner-city campuses and science parks (SPs) of Amsterdam and Utrecht, the case-studies of this research, differ in terms of their location relative to the city, their masterplan typologies and the arrangement of buildings. However, they are similar in terms of the aforementioned issues of public spaces. The novelty of this research is the attempt to overcome such issues using an innovative mixed-methods approach that tests the &lsquo, spatial affordances for creativity&rsquo, with empirical data collection and analysis. This raises the importance of mapping, quantifying and analysing the spatial distribution of momentary perceptions, experiences, and feelings of people with methods such as volunteered geographic information (VGI). The results show that proximity between multiple urban functions and physical features, such as parks, caf&eacute, s and urban seating are important when it comes to explaining the high frequency of creative encounters between people. Urban designers of campuses can use the applied method as a tool to plan and design attractive public spaces that provide creativity through the transfer of tacit knowledge, social well-being, positive momentary perceptions, sense of community, and a sense of place.

Globally as the population ages, the prevalence of dementia will increase. Simultaneously, there is a trend toward people ageing at home. Therefore, more people will be ageing at home with dementia, as opposed to institutional environments. In this context, there has been a recent shift in research exploring ways that people can live well with the consequences of the disease. As a part of this emerging research, the social and spatial aspects of the lives of people living with memory problems are becoming increasingly of interest. The aim of this article is to use the concept of activity space to examine the social health of older adults with memory problems and dementia who live at home. Activity space data were collected from seven older adults experiencing memory problems and living at home in the Netherlands. Using a mixed-methods approach, insight into their activity spaces were gained through walking interviews, 14 days of global positioning system (GPS) movement data, travel diary entries and in-depth interviews. The GPS data, travel diary data and interview transcripts were analyzed using a grounded visualization approach. Our findings show that participants interact independently in routine activity spaces but depend on others to participate in occasional activity spaces. Interactions within both these spaces contribute to the social health of older adults with memory problems and dementia who live at home. Additionally, participants used coping strategies and decision-making to maintain autonomy in daily life. The findings can inform dementia-friendly initiatives and social health care planning.

To date, little is known about the spatial aspects of the creativity of university campuses and their public spaces. This study recognises that creativity is the fourth sustainability, because the spatial configuration of campuses and city-university accessibilities are &lsquo, creative solutions&rsquo, conceived for human needs. At the same time, creative ideas depend on interactions between individuals and the built environment. Therefore, based on the theoretical framework of the scholars who have explored the spatial aspects of creativity, this study empirically investigates Zernike Campus, Groningen, and its public spaces using a mixed-methods approach that involves (1) a space syntax analysis of the campus&rsquo, s spatial configuration, (2) volunteered geographic information (VGI) of the users&rsquo, perceptions, and (3) non-participatory observations of the interactions between people and the built environment in public spaces with high and low &lsquo, potential for creativity&rsquo, The results show that creativity cannot be explained simply by analysing spatial configurations, but that it also depends on the combination of the land-use mix, physical features, positive experiences, and perceptions of a sense of place which enable trust and interactions, and which facilitate creative encounters. Therefore, the mixed-methods approach applied here can help urban planners and designers to address public spaces more effectively, integrating conditions that support creativity.

Visions can be valuable tools for guiding and uniting land use interests in a region with fragmented administration. What determines the strength of a vision and how can it effectively play its role? Our study tested and supplemented hypotheses on the success factors of visions. We chose a city in a rebuilding process because that represents a most intensive and pressing vision process. We interviewed local policy-makers, designers, researchers, and journalists to find out what they would spontaneously cite as a vision’s most crucial factors. We also reviewed the subsequent New Orleans recovery plans and compared our findings with hypotheses from visioning literature. The interviewees’ spontaneous answers largely confirm the key hypotheses about success from the visioning literature. However, the most frequently mentioned factors were not in the literature: a vision needs to be propagated by a powerful authority, a favourable larger political climate, and the funds to sustain the implementation process. For a vision to make a difference, it needs to be substantively relevant and persuasive but also have a favourable institutional climate to help it along.

This article reports about what remains in New Towns from the site's former structures. We wanted to know whether NTs, despite being landmarks of modernistic drawing table cities, adopted pieces of their site’s history in their urban forms, in a growing awareness that historic structures add place distinctiveness. Our study was prompted by two observations. The first was that the perspective on historic structures in Western planning practices has changed dramatically over the last decades, from a preservationist perspective on conserving particular buildings, to a practice of including the history of places as an asset in urban design. Original canals, main roads, street patterns and small settlements may be adopted to give new neighbourhoods a sense of authenticity and allow them to tell the story of the site's past. The second observation was that Asia has witnessed the emergence of mega cities and New Towns for more than a decade, and will probably continue to do so. As their urban expansion will inevitably cover landscapes with a past, in terms of villages, infrastructures and communities, the question rises if and how these histories are included in the urban design of such expanding Asian cities. We chose to analyse how in Hong Kong, with a long tradition of developing a total of 9 New Towns so far, old structures have been included in NT design. Based on historic maps, NT Masterplans and site visits, we show that in most of HK's NTs, the villages and towns that were on these sites have been preserved. The extent to which they are an asset to the surrounding NT today is low and did not increase over time.

This study assessed the benefits and limitations of e-bike use for students participating in a pilot in a university town in the Netherlands. It targets a gap in the literature regarding e-bike use in early adulthood. Thirty-seven pilot participants completed a survey on their e-bike experiences, and follow-up in-depth interviews were held with eight participants. Results suggest there is a considerable potential for e-bike use among students. Participants valued e-bike speed, ease of use, the enjoyable experience of assisted cycling and independency from public transport schedules. Main impediments were the high costs of e-bikes, which have to compete with low-cost regular bikes and free public transportation. The study was based on a small, non-representative sample. Self-selection of participants and self-report of travel behaviors may have affected the internal and external validity of the results. Yet, the study offers first insights in the potential for e-bike use among younger populations. The positive attitudes of students suggest increased acceptance of e-bikes for everyday use, and likelihood of use in later life. Insights may guide future development of sustainable transport systems in university environments specifically and society in general. Results reveal a high potential for e-bikes to substitute public transportation use, but the high purchasing price makes it difficult for the e-bike to compete with other transport modes.

This paper tests the quality of calculated 2D isovist variables as predictors of perceived landscape openness. An isovist is the calculated field of view from a given viewpoint in space. Three isovist variables were selected to estimate openness: the minimum radial, the maximum radial and the average radial. An experiment with 32 participants was conducted to compare values of these calculated variables with perceived openness. The comparison showed that two variables, the maximum radial and average radial, explained most of the variation of perceived openness for groups and individuals. The three calculated isovist variables were strongly correlated to their measured equivalents in the field, which were obtained with a binocular with a rangefinder. The isovist variables also showed strong correlations with their perceived equivalents obtained by the perception of the 32 participants, except at very long distances. This research shows that the selected isovist variables are good indicators for perceived landscape openness. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The aim of this methods-focused article is to explore the potential benefits of integrating GPS, diary and in-depth interview data to gain richer insights into the everyday mobility practices of older adults. Eighteen adults, aged 65-90 years, living in the Netherlands, participated in the study. Our findings illustrate how quantitative (GPS) and qualitative (interviews and diary-based) approaches together can generate different insights and layers of understanding from each individual method in order to enhance the overall study findings. Our findings demonstrate that our methodological approach generates new insights with respect to GPS-measured and self-reported mobility, time-geographies, and micro-geographies of older adults in the Netherlands. In conclusion, our mixed-methods approach contributes to a better understanding of the everyday mobility practices of older adults, and could be used in other demographic groups.

In the last decade policy makers have increasingly recognized the need to include people's perceptions in methods for describing landscape quality. At the same time, a third wave of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has become available that make it technically possible to model landscape quality in a realistic manner. However, as there is often a mismatch between science and policy, it remains unclear to what extent perception-based models developed by scientists can be useful to policy makers. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the usefulness to policy making of a GIS-based procedure for describing perceived landscape openness. To this end, a workshop was organized which was attended by eight Dutch policy makers who acted as representatives of their province (region). The Group Decision Room (GDR) technique was used to elicit the policy makers' evaluations of the procedure in an anonymous and reliable manner. The procedure was presented to the policy makers using cases from their own province, which they assessed using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that policy makers rated the procedure as being highly relevant to policy making, scientifically credible, usable by policy makers and feasible to implement in the policy making process. They especially appreciated the flexibility and transparency of the procedure. The policy makers concluded that the procedure would be of most value for monitoring landscape changes and for analysing impacts on landscape openness in land use scenario studies. However, they requested guidelines for proper implementation of the various options in the procedure. In general, the current study shows that explicit and transparent evaluation of the usefulness of GIS-based tools can aid integration at the science-policy interface and help to ensure that both scientists and policy makers are informed of interrelated options and requirements. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This paper presents and discusses a procedure for measuring landscape openness, which is an important characteristic of the visual landscape. The procedure aims to ensure the quality of descriptions of landscape openness while being flexible enough to produce descriptions suitable for various purposes. Geo-data and a Geographic Information System (GIS) are used to develop the procedure, which consists of five steps: 1) select road network and apply sampling strategy; 2) merge terrain and topographic datasets and create contour lines; 3) identify visual limitations; 4) compute visible space; and 5) select and calculate variables. The procedure is applied to a case study to illustrate the possibilities. The paper includes a discussion of the realism, generality, precision and sensitivity of the procedure. The balance between a high degree of realism and a high degree of generality ensures a procedure which can be used by policy-makers and planners for a wide range of purposes at various levels.

There is increasing evidence that the quality of green space significantly contributes to neighborhood satisfaction and well-being, independent of the mere amount of green space. In this paper, we examined residents' perceptions of the quality and beneficial affordances of green space in relation to objectively assessed accessibility and usability. We used data from a survey in two neighborhoods (N = 223) of a medium-sized city in the Netherlands, which were similar in the amount of green space and other physical and socio-demographic characteristics, but differed in the availability of accessible and usable green spaces. Results show that residents of the neighborhood with a higher availability of accessible and usable green spaces were more satisfied with their neighborhood. This difference was statistically mediated by the higher level of perceived green space quality. Neighborhood satisfaction was significantly positively related to well-being. However, residents of the two neighborhoods did not differ in self-reported well-being and beneficial affordances of green space. These analyses contribute to a further understanding of how the accessibility and usability of green spaces may increase people's neighborhood satisfaction. It highlights the importance of perceived quality in addition to the amount of green space when examining the beneficial effects of green space.

The character of a landscape can be seen as the outcome of people's perception of their physical environment, which is important for spatial planning and decision making. Three modes of landscape perception are proposed: view from a viewpoint, view from a road, and view of an area. Three sampling methods to calculate visibility measures simulate these modes of perception. We compared the results of the three sampling methods for two study areas. The ROPE method provides information about subspaces. The road method enables the analysis of sequences. The grid point method calculates visibility measures at almost every location in space, providing detailed information about transitions and pattern change between original and new situations. The mean visibility values for the study areas reveal major differences between the sampling methods. Combining the results of the three methods is expected to be useful for describing all the facets of landscape perception.