Young architecture professionals examined crossovers between ecology and architecture, and ways to apply this by building in interaction with the environment. Within a case study at the Amsterdam Science Park, they designed building proposals in which complexity, biodiversity, ecology and self-organization are central. This concerns building in the broadest sense of the word: forming elements into structures, at different levels of complexity.
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Article
Urban Ecology: making the living city
How do we develop sustainable and nature-inclusive urban areas? Starting from this question, Esmee Geerken, ArtScience fellow at the UvA Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) and WAAG-artist in residence, created the course 'Urban Ecology: building as being' for the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture.
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Article
The relationship between ethnic composition of the residential environment and self-reported health among Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam
Previous studies from the US and UK suggest that neighbourhood ethnic composition is associated with health, positive or negative, depending on the health outcome and ethnic group. We examined the association between neighbourhood ethnic composition and self-reported health in these groups in Amsterdam, and we aimed to explore whether there is spatial variation in this association.
Methods
We used micro-scale data to describe the ethnic composition in buffers around the home location of 2701 Turks and 2661 Moroccans. Multilevel regression analysis was used to assess the association between three measures of ethnic composition (% co-ethnics, % other ethnic group, Herfindahl index) and three measures of self-reported health: self-rated health, Physical and Mental Component Score (PCS, MCS). We adjusted for socioeconomic position at individual and area level. We used geographically weighted regression and spatially stratified regression analyses to explore whether associations differed within Amsterdam.
Results
Ethnic heterogeneity and own ethnic density were not related to self-rated health for both ethnic groups. Higher density of Turks was associated with better self-rated health among Moroccans at all buffer sizes, with the most significant relations for small buffers. Higher heterogeneity was associated with lower scores on PCS and MCS among Turks (suggesting worse health). We found spatial variation in the association of the density of the other ethnic group with self-rated health of Moroccans and Turks. We found a positive association for both groups, spatially concentrated in the sub-district Geuzenveld.
Conclusions
Our study showed that the association of ethnic composition with self-reported health among Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam differed between the groups and reveals mainly at small spatial scales. Among both groups, an association of higher density of the other group with better self-rated health was found in a particular part of Amsterdam, which might be explained by the presence of a relatively strong sense of community between the two groups in that area. The study suggests that it is important to pay attention to other-group density, to use area measurements at small spatial scales and to examine the spatial variation in these associations. This may help to identify neighbourhood characteristics contributing to these type of area effects on urban minority health.
Eleonore M. Veldhuizen, Umar Z. Ikram, Sjoerd de Vos and Anton E. Kunst (2017). International Journal of Health Geographics 16:12.
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Article
Re-naturing cities: great promises, deadlock . . . and new beginnings?
The chapter starts from the premise that it is vitally important to recognize that the rapid rate of planetary urbanization is the main driver of environmental change. Indeed, the “sustainability” of contemporary urban life (understood as the expanded reproduction of its socio-physical form and functions) is responsible for 80 percent of the world’s use of resources and most of the world’s waste. We wish to highlight how these urban origins are routinely ignored in urban theory and practice, and how feeble techno-managerial attempts to produce more “sustainable” forms of urban living are actually heightening the combined and uneven socio-ecological apocalypse that marks the contemporary dynamics of planetary urbanization. This chapter is, therefore, not so much concerned with the question of nature IN the city, as it is with the urbanization OF nature, understood as the process through which all forms of nature are socially mobilized, economically incorporated, and physically metabolized/transformed in order to support the urbanization process. First, we shall chart the strange history of how the relationship between cities and environments has been scripted and imagined over the last century or so. Second, we shall suggest how the environmental question entered urban theory and practice in the late twentieth century. And, finally, we shall explore how and why, despite our growing understanding of the relationship between environmental change and urbanization and a consensual focus on the need for “sustainable” urban development, the environmental conundrum and the pervasive problems it engenders do not show any sign of abating. We shall conclude by briefly charting some of the key intellectual and practical challenges ahead. Keywords: environmental politics; socio-ecological conflict urban political ecology; urban theory.