Category Archives: human impact

Empowering Resilient Communities

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Resilient Communities | Comunità Resilienti

Following earlier presentations of the Design of Public Space research group from Delft, Maurice Harteveld participates in the ‘Empowering Resilient Communities’ event organised at the Italian Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, on Friday 12 November, from 2 pm. As part of the international scientific committee of the pavilion, he will reflect on various Italian projects, which will be presented in this session. His review relates to a broader inventory of actions, which are being currently taken in the networks of public space to strengthen community resilience. Rotterdam serves as an exemplar, and as such these actions challenge the design of public space, and with that among others the disciplines of urban design, landscape architecture, and architecture.

The Italian Pavilion has organised the event as an opportunity to present and discuss some of the experiences already included in the research project Mapping Resilient Communities, while providing a platform for knowledge transfer and capacity development, especially in most vulnerable areas, in Italy and beyond, with the participation of UN-Habitat.

when:
Friday 12 November
14:00-17:00h

where:
17th International Architecture Exhibition
Italian Pavilion
Venice
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Public Spaces for Domestic & Local Life

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While the ‘UN-Habitat State of the World Cities Report 2020 on the Value of Sustainable Urbanization’ has been launched, the international symposium ‘2020 A Year Without Public Space: Reflection and Outlook’ has been an opportunity to look back, reflect, and plan ahead for 2021.

The transcription of the closing remarks of Maurice Harteveld at our initiative ‘2020 a year without public space under the COVID-19 pandemic’, including reflections and an outlook beyond (online symposium on 7 November 2020, 3PM (+ 8UTC)):

2020 – A Year without Public Space has been an impressive initiative. We have seen 20 webinars, engaging more than 100 speakers all over the world, and over another thousand attendees watching the presentations and thematic discussions live. On the YouTube channel, we can see that the numbers of views continuously grow. From May to September; the global community of ‘public space’- experts have joined together. The networks of public spaces have become a world-wide-web. Non-Exclusive!

At the moment, we are online, but our concerns are at the human space, in its physical reality. We keep sharing our observations, in an immense challenge. It is not easy! Under the current pandemic crisis, the global death rate is approaching 1.5 million people; 50 million cases of positive testing. An extremely small minority of countries have not reported any coronavirus cases. Kiribati, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu seem to be still on the safe side. In contrast, particularly, communities in urbanised areas are infected at large. LA, Miami, and New York City… Rio, and Sao Paulo. Here densities are higher, people live closer together, and thus, transmission may go too fast, & too easy.

My contribution to the round table discussion is not another presentation. Deliberately! Continue reading →

Beyond the Pandemic

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The Impact of the Pandemic to Street Life, Urban Culture and Beyond.
Maurice Harteveld, co-host and moderator of the roundtable discussion with speakers from the Netherlands, from Greece, from France, and from the United States.

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The Impact of the Pandemic to Street Life, Urban Culture and Beyond

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We have seen a growing number of people have been hospitalised per day, and people passed away. Both followed the bell curve. Every country faced critical moments when hospitalised totals stressed the capacity of medical care. The uncertainty among the populations grew in that period. Particularly, the impact of the pandemic to street life became visible in those days. Cities locked down, people stayed at home, and shifts in urban culture became visible. Can we place those changes in a longer perspective? Looking back to what happened before, and forecasting what most likely happens beyond 2020: A Year without Public Space under the COVID-19 Pandemic?

The Impact of the Pandemic to Street Life, Urban Culture and Beyond

Image created by Catherine Cordasco.
Submitted for United Nations Global Call Out To Creatives – help stop the spread of COVID-19.

Join the webinar!
When: Thursday, August 6, 2.00 – 3.30pm CET
> Registration

This webinar is part of the initiative ‘2020: A Year without Public Space under the COVID-19 Pandemic‘.
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Courses run Online On-Distance

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In-class on-campus settings have been cancelled due to the situation induced by the COVID-19 virus. Participants of the courses have been distributed over a wide variety of time zones (from -11h to +8h). As a consequence, the graduate course on ‘People, Movement & Public Space’ and graduate design studios on ‘Architecture and Urban Design’ and ‘The City of the Future’ run fully online and on-distance for its 100 registred Delft students and exchange students. This includes an on-demand video lecture series and small weekly assignments that go along. Remote education includes sharing info, presentations, student peer-review, and, in the studio, tutorials, workshops and whiteboard sessions.

The course on ‘People, Movement & Public Space’ provides an overview of vested theories and cutting edge applied research on people’s movement, urban vitality, and public space. This includes seminal works and continues by updating understanding by today’s challenges. The role of citizens and designers in shaping vibrant urban public space is explored through readings, film, and active discussions among participants. The course material, provided in a virtual learning environment, comes alive through active discussions and the direct application of theories in analysing real urban settings.

In the interdisciplinary Master’s design studios, participants discuss and overlap their updates and translate this to urban analytical approaches in a group setting. These approaches are presented to peers and a broad team of interdisciplinary supervisors at least twice a week. The collaborate focus is particularly on the consequences of urbanisation for the major foundations of the city of the future – urban infrastructure and public space –, and with this focus, the ultimate aim is to envision an illustrative and inherently experimental design within the larger set of visions produced by fellow students. In these designs, students and staff are interested on one hand to the urban intervention in the built environment and its effect on architecture, and on the other hand to the architectural treatment of the city and its effect on urban design.

Smart Urban Mobility

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Why is smart mobility essential in urban development?

Like many metropolitan areas, the Amsterdam metropolis is prospering, the city is growing, new homes are being built, new companies and talent continue to relocate here, and the city is becoming increasingly popular with tourists. If residents, visitors, commuters, and others continue to travel as they do today, all forms of transport combined will grow in the coming years between 20% and 40%, and traffic will grind to a halt.

Good accessibility – with smart connections within the city and with the rest of the country and world – makes an important contribution to Amsterdam’s attractiveness for all travelers. Moreover, particularly in Amsterdam, social diversity and inclusivity are valued, which means providing everyone with equal access to good liveability and transport.

Mobility operates as the intersection between the city’s infrastructure and its city’s inhabitants. It is the central link in the well-functioning of a city and a key element in the organization of multimodal transport. In doing so, it is not only about the connection to other areas, but also about sowing together the fabric of the area and the movement of people in the area itself.
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Conversations in the Anthropocene

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Introducing the Anthropocene
Colin Waters is Secretary of the Anthropocene Working Group of the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy, the body investigating the Anthropocene as a potential geological time unit. His working group is putting forward a proposal towards the recognition of the proposed new epoch. They started in 2009 and up until last year, they were pulling together all information that was available. “For example the biological changes that have happened are irreversible. Once species are transferred across the planet, you can’t put them in a box and put them back in their indigenous state”, he has explained while being our guest in Delft: “Even things like carbon dioxide, this will last as a signal for thousands of years. Even if we are reducing our carbon emission immediately, we are still looking at emissions which are going to be elevated above natural levels for thousands of years. At the present, there is no indication that we are changing that trend.” The human impact may be like a meteorite impact. At the end of the Cretaceous Period when the dinosaurs became extinct, a spike of iridium (an extra-terrestrial element) changed the conditions on Earth. “You still find a layer of a few millimeters thick which is high in iridium, and we can use that as the basis of the start of the new Paleogene Period following the Cretaceous.” It has been “a state change, a game-changer, to a state which now is very different from what it was before and is not recreatable to a large extent either.” What is our share, as designers?

Architecture is perhaps one that we have not mined sufficiently in the past that can provide information that is new to us and help build the story that we are developing. – Colin Waters

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A New Era is Upon Us

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…So say geologists who have recently heralded the Anthropocene as the world’s youngest epoch, shaped extensively by human intervention: Erosion and sediment transport through mining and agriculture, changes in the composition of the atmosphere through global warming, and an alteration in the biosphere are among the most pressing effects of humanity on the planet (International Commission on Stratigraphy). At the same time, the growing societal volatility of recent years – the spread of terrorism, the ongoing refugee crisis, the shift towards populism – make it increasingly difficult to forecast the effects of our actions on the planet. This might indicate that our climatic dilemmas are matched by social conflicts. Will this new era herald our end? Or are we at the dawn of a new epoch that will see us better succeed in sustainably managing the planet?

We must consequently ask ourselves what, if anything, we can do as designers to face the challenge of planning in increasingly unpredictable times: How can we imagine the future of a place like Syria, that has just witnessed an exodus of unprecedented scales? How can we still imagine a world in balance with its surroundings, when the ideals of sustainable development are not embraced by the global population? These are the kind of questions we would like to discuss with a wide range of thinkers in this year’s Urban and Landscape Week.

Towards the Edge of the Anthropocene
incl. a symposium with lectures, and discussions as well as a short competition.

Programme:
16 October 2017
Keynote Lecture: Christophe Girot
Afternoon Lectures: Jan Willem Petersen, and Godofredo Pereira
Panel Discussion moderated by Maurice Harteveld

17 October 2017
Keynote Lecture: Colin Waters
Afternoon Lectures: Sabine Mueller, and Jan Jongert
Panel Discussion moderated by Maurice Harteveld

18 October 2017
Competition

19 October 2017
Keynote Lecture: Claudia Pasquero
Closing Event

Where:
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Berlage Rooms and Oostserre
Delft University of Technology

Tickets:
at Polis ticket service

Towards the Edge of The Anthropocene

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A new era is upon us. For centuries mankind has sought to gain control over the world we live in. Now we are moving towards the end of a world defined by nature and the dawn of an age dominated by the human condition. The Anthropocene is coming and it is our turn to choose sides. More technology or more democracy? Social justice or environmental accountability? Further or no further?


Towards the Edge of The Anthropocene: [no]Further. Trailer, published by ‘Urban Landscape’ on YouTube

Coming soon! 16-19 October 2017