HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 2018
Objective: This article describes an approach to a metrics-based evaluation of public space in ho... more Objective: This article describes an approach to a metrics-based evaluation of public space in hospitals using cross-disciplinary qualitative and quantitative analyses. The method, Indoor Public Space Measurement (IPSM), is well suited to researchers and designers who intend to evaluate user-centered spatial solutions in hospitals and similar facilities. Background: Healthcare is transiting toward a value-based policy at all levels. Choosing the right set of qualitative and quantitative analyses to support value-based design solutions is not always an easy journey for healthcare design consultants. This article seeks to pull together the key analyses to evaluate the impact of the hospital indoor public space on the psychosocial well-being of the hospital users. Method: A step-by step guide to performing key analyses to evaluate the impact of hospital indoor public space environment on the users’ psychosocial well-being is provided. A case study from the authors’ research is utilized...
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Physical activity is good for people’s health. The relationship between the built environment and... more Physical activity is good for people’s health. The relationship between the built environment and physical activity has been well documented. However, evidence is both scarce and scattered on specific urban interventions, i.e., intentional redesigns of the built environment that promote physical activity accompanied by pre- and post-effect measurement. This umbrella review aims to synthesize the findings of systematic reviews focused on these urban interventions. We followed the PRISMA 2020 and JBI umbrella review protocol guidelines and searched seven databases covering the period between Jan 2010 and April 2022 using keywords relating to the built environment, health, physical activity, and interventions. This yielded seven systematic reviews, in which we identified several urban interventions that can promote physical activity. We found positive effects of urban interventions on physical activity regarding park renovations, adding exercise equipment, introducing a (new) pocket pa...
Michael Ryckewaert publication Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State. Infra... more Michael Ryckewaert publication Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State. Infrastructure, planning and architecture 1945-1973 describes the evolution of the welfare state and Belgium, more specifically its spatial characteristics. This by now historical socio-political model had decidedly collectivist traits, culminating in the provision of social security networks and a vast expansion of the public domain. If collectivism was one of the key elements of the welfare state, the absence of centralized planning appears to make the Belgian variant somewhat problematic. Whereas in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and France, modernism became the house style of the welfare state, thanks to the massive investments in public housing, this did not happen in Belgium. Here, the De Taeye Act of 1948 sponsored the construction of individual, detached houses; not surprisingly, most clients preferred traditional architecture and refrained from modern experiments. Industrial...
As part of the renewal in 2013/2014 of the bachelor education curriculum in the Faculty of Archit... more As part of the renewal in 2013/2014 of the bachelor education curriculum in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, a new study programme was prepared...
This article summarizes part of the gist of Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Response... more This article summarizes part of the gist of Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Responses to Enlightenment Ideas and Geopolitical Realities , a book that discusses Dutch urbanism in its international setting, dividing its contents in a series of clusters that are presented as being determined by geopolitics, ideology, and planning. The timeframe of over 200 years (400 years if the prologue is included) highlights continuities and discontinuities that otherwise would have been lost – a strong motive in favor or writing books instead of articles. It defines urbanism as a combination of spatial planning (distributing human activities across space in cities, regions and on the global level) and design (one of its uses being that of a billboard for local identity, the community, the nation or political ideologies). In the two centuries of urban planning presented here, the Netherlands had to re-invent itself several times. Dutch urban history is marked by changes on the international scene, the prevailing political ideals, the development of modern planning as a distinct discipline and the continuous changes of the main countries that inspired Dutch planning – France until the 1830s, Germany from the 1830s to the 1930s, and since the 1930s increasingly the United States. The years between 1795 and 1815 marked the end of an era: though the nation still clung to the idea that it could play an important role in the world’s political affairs, its days as a ‘hyper power’ - to quote Amy Chua - were numbered. Nothing illustrated this more vividly than the run-down state of most of its cities. Especially in the province of Holland, many had become a faded imagine of their former self: comparing maps made during the so-called Golden Age with the brand new cadaster maps that had been ordered by the national government in the early nineteenth century, nobody could escape the impression that for almost two hundred years, nothing had changed. Some cities, for instance Enkhuizen, had even lost a large part of their inhabitants and demolished part of their buildings... In 1815 the Netherlands definitely abandoned the political structure that had characterized it in its heydays: the federal republic was replaced by a unitary state headed by a king, William I, a representative of the Orange family the fate of which was closely connected to the Netherlands since it gained independence in the late sixteenth century. William I, who had spent many years in England, embarked upon an ambitious campaign that should restore the country to its former glory, an ambition sparkled by the merger with the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium). Canals were dug and new roads, subdivided according to a French inspired classification system, were built that connected the two re-united states, accepting the distinct nature of both: the former Republic was expected to revitalize an economy based on trade, banking and agriculture, whereas the Southern half continued to promote industry. Combined with many other differences - the North was Calvinist and bourgeois, the South was Catholic and here the aristocracy never lost its privileged position - the merger proved untenable and after a short civil war, Belgium became independent (and subsequently developed into the continent’s first industrial state). William’s revanchist policies caused economic stagnation in the Northern half, the huge investments in its infrastructure proved futile.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Promoting adequate physical activity (PA) such as walking and cycling is essential to cope with t... more Promoting adequate physical activity (PA) such as walking and cycling is essential to cope with the global health challenge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Much research has been conducted to analyze how the built environment can promote PA, but the results are not consistent. Some scholars found that certain built environments such as green spaces generated positive impacts on PA, while some other studies showed no correlations. We suspected that the built environment should be measured in a deeply holistic nuanced way in order to properly reflect its impact on PA. Therefore, our research adopted an integral urban-analysis comparing three typical neighborhoods in Beijing, China. Our data show that the highest PA occurs in the neighborhood with the lowest density, amount of green space and street connectivity, apparently compensated by its low-rise housing type and high appreciation of the quality of sidewalks and street safety. This indicates that dimensions impacting PA have ...
HERD: Health Environments Research & Design Journal, 2018
Objective: This article describes an approach to a metrics-based evaluation of public space in ho... more Objective: This article describes an approach to a metrics-based evaluation of public space in hospitals using cross-disciplinary qualitative and quantitative analyses. The method, Indoor Public Space Measurement (IPSM), is well suited to researchers and designers who intend to evaluate user-centered spatial solutions in hospitals and similar facilities. Background: Healthcare is transiting toward a value-based policy at all levels. Choosing the right set of qualitative and quantitative analyses to support value-based design solutions is not always an easy journey for healthcare design consultants. This article seeks to pull together the key analyses to evaluate the impact of the hospital indoor public space on the psychosocial well-being of the hospital users. Method: A step-by step guide to performing key analyses to evaluate the impact of hospital indoor public space environment on the users’ psychosocial well-being is provided. A case study from the authors’ research is utilized...
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Physical activity is good for people’s health. The relationship between the built environment and... more Physical activity is good for people’s health. The relationship between the built environment and physical activity has been well documented. However, evidence is both scarce and scattered on specific urban interventions, i.e., intentional redesigns of the built environment that promote physical activity accompanied by pre- and post-effect measurement. This umbrella review aims to synthesize the findings of systematic reviews focused on these urban interventions. We followed the PRISMA 2020 and JBI umbrella review protocol guidelines and searched seven databases covering the period between Jan 2010 and April 2022 using keywords relating to the built environment, health, physical activity, and interventions. This yielded seven systematic reviews, in which we identified several urban interventions that can promote physical activity. We found positive effects of urban interventions on physical activity regarding park renovations, adding exercise equipment, introducing a (new) pocket pa...
Michael Ryckewaert publication Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State. Infra... more Michael Ryckewaert publication Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State. Infrastructure, planning and architecture 1945-1973 describes the evolution of the welfare state and Belgium, more specifically its spatial characteristics. This by now historical socio-political model had decidedly collectivist traits, culminating in the provision of social security networks and a vast expansion of the public domain. If collectivism was one of the key elements of the welfare state, the absence of centralized planning appears to make the Belgian variant somewhat problematic. Whereas in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and France, modernism became the house style of the welfare state, thanks to the massive investments in public housing, this did not happen in Belgium. Here, the De Taeye Act of 1948 sponsored the construction of individual, detached houses; not surprisingly, most clients preferred traditional architecture and refrained from modern experiments. Industrial...
As part of the renewal in 2013/2014 of the bachelor education curriculum in the Faculty of Archit... more As part of the renewal in 2013/2014 of the bachelor education curriculum in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft University of Technology, a new study programme was prepared...
This article summarizes part of the gist of Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Response... more This article summarizes part of the gist of Town Planning in the Netherlands since 1800. Responses to Enlightenment Ideas and Geopolitical Realities , a book that discusses Dutch urbanism in its international setting, dividing its contents in a series of clusters that are presented as being determined by geopolitics, ideology, and planning. The timeframe of over 200 years (400 years if the prologue is included) highlights continuities and discontinuities that otherwise would have been lost – a strong motive in favor or writing books instead of articles. It defines urbanism as a combination of spatial planning (distributing human activities across space in cities, regions and on the global level) and design (one of its uses being that of a billboard for local identity, the community, the nation or political ideologies). In the two centuries of urban planning presented here, the Netherlands had to re-invent itself several times. Dutch urban history is marked by changes on the international scene, the prevailing political ideals, the development of modern planning as a distinct discipline and the continuous changes of the main countries that inspired Dutch planning – France until the 1830s, Germany from the 1830s to the 1930s, and since the 1930s increasingly the United States. The years between 1795 and 1815 marked the end of an era: though the nation still clung to the idea that it could play an important role in the world’s political affairs, its days as a ‘hyper power’ - to quote Amy Chua - were numbered. Nothing illustrated this more vividly than the run-down state of most of its cities. Especially in the province of Holland, many had become a faded imagine of their former self: comparing maps made during the so-called Golden Age with the brand new cadaster maps that had been ordered by the national government in the early nineteenth century, nobody could escape the impression that for almost two hundred years, nothing had changed. Some cities, for instance Enkhuizen, had even lost a large part of their inhabitants and demolished part of their buildings... In 1815 the Netherlands definitely abandoned the political structure that had characterized it in its heydays: the federal republic was replaced by a unitary state headed by a king, William I, a representative of the Orange family the fate of which was closely connected to the Netherlands since it gained independence in the late sixteenth century. William I, who had spent many years in England, embarked upon an ambitious campaign that should restore the country to its former glory, an ambition sparkled by the merger with the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium). Canals were dug and new roads, subdivided according to a French inspired classification system, were built that connected the two re-united states, accepting the distinct nature of both: the former Republic was expected to revitalize an economy based on trade, banking and agriculture, whereas the Southern half continued to promote industry. Combined with many other differences - the North was Calvinist and bourgeois, the South was Catholic and here the aristocracy never lost its privileged position - the merger proved untenable and after a short civil war, Belgium became independent (and subsequently developed into the continent’s first industrial state). William’s revanchist policies caused economic stagnation in the Northern half, the huge investments in its infrastructure proved futile.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Promoting adequate physical activity (PA) such as walking and cycling is essential to cope with t... more Promoting adequate physical activity (PA) such as walking and cycling is essential to cope with the global health challenge of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Much research has been conducted to analyze how the built environment can promote PA, but the results are not consistent. Some scholars found that certain built environments such as green spaces generated positive impacts on PA, while some other studies showed no correlations. We suspected that the built environment should be measured in a deeply holistic nuanced way in order to properly reflect its impact on PA. Therefore, our research adopted an integral urban-analysis comparing three typical neighborhoods in Beijing, China. Our data show that the highest PA occurs in the neighborhood with the lowest density, amount of green space and street connectivity, apparently compensated by its low-rise housing type and high appreciation of the quality of sidewalks and street safety. This indicates that dimensions impacting PA have ...
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