This study presents a systematic review of the literature on decision support for designing hospital layouts using spatial network analysis and/or simulation modelling. The review includes 102 articles, which are classified into five different categories concerning their layout-related challenges. Specifically, the categories include overcrowding, patient waiting times, visibility & staff interaction, wayfinding & walkability, and other issues such as hospital-acquired infections. The main finding is the cross-referenced table of different performance issues related to the hospital layout to different assessment methods, indicators, and quality criteria. The review suggests prospects for associating hospital design problems/challenges with spatial layout, as well as a framework for developing methods for layout representation, aggregation and relativization borrowing from the fields of transport planning and operations research. The main focus of this study lies in the spatial layout. Viewing the spatial complexity of a hospital as an indoor spatial environment is at least as complex as an urban environment, thus justifying a geographical approach; hence we expand the scope of the literature review to papers that may not directly address hospital design but have relations to spatial decision support systems.

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Post-war urban neighbourhoods in industrialised countries have been shown to negatively affect the lifestyles of their residents due to their design. This study aims at developing an empirical procedure to select locations to be redesigned and the determinants of health at stake in these locations, with involvement of residents’ perspectives as core issue. We addressed a post-war neighbourhood in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands. We collected data from three perspectives: spatial analyses by urban designers, interviews with experts in local health and social care (n = 11) and online questionnaires filled in by residents (n = 99). These data provided input for the selection of locations to be redesigned by a multidisciplinary team (n = 16). The procedure yielded the following types of locations (and determinants): An area adjacent to a central shopping mall (social interaction, traffic safety, physical activity), a park (experiencing green, physical activity, social safety, social interaction) and a block of low-rise row houses around a public square (social safety, social interaction, traffic safety). We developed an empirical procedure for the selection of locations and determinants to be addressed, with addressing residents’ perspectives. This procedure is potentially applicable to similar neighbourhoods internationally.

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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 to be considered in context, and the peoples’ perception of the built environment matters.@en

Port cities have long played a key role in the development, discovery, and fight against diseases. They have been laboratories for policies to address public health issues. Diseases reached port cities through maritime exchanges, and the bubonic plague is a key example. Port city residents’ close contact with water further increased the chance for diseases such as cholera. Analyzing three European port cities, this article first explores the relevance of water quality for public health through the lens of the Dutch city of Rotterdam. It then examines plans and projects for London that were shaped by social Darwinism and stressed the moral failings of slum dwellers as a major cause for their misery. It finally explores the case of Hamburg as the perfect example of a city that cultivated ideals of purity and cleanliness by addressing all issues at stake in public health. This article on urban hygiene in three port cities shows how remarkably rich this field of study is; it also demonstrates that the multifaceted aspects of public health in port cities require further attention.@en

Bespreking van het boek 'Het gebouw als bewijs: Het bouwhistorische verhaal achter erfgoed' onder redactie van Ronald Stenvert en Gabri van Tussenbroek.@en

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 on the Fundamentals (in Dutch: Grondslagen) of spatial design. The teaching approach, visually presented by some examples and explained in this paper, consists of three closely related elements: (a) lectures and readings on basic concepts of architectural, urban and landscape architectural design, (b) a canon of 160 projects illustrating these concepts and (c) a typomorphological project analysis exercise. This new, integrated programme was the follow-up of three former, separate study programmes, Basic Concepts of Architectural Design, Basic Concepts of Urban Design, and History of Architecture, Urbanism and Art. The faculty had serious doubts about the educational quality of those study programmes, consisting of 11 small courses of only one or two EC. The curriculum renewal brought a fresh look at study contents, teaching approach and assessment strategies, based on the didactic principles of integrated learning.@en

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 to illustrate the application of the method. Results: Interpolating the results of all the analyses, the reader can identify where in the layout most of interactions among users occur, identify their typology and evaluate the contribution to the general psychosocial well-being, and know which group of users is more exposed to a specific typology of interaction. Conclusions: The IPSM method can help design consultants to measure the impact of the built environment of hospital public space on its occupants’ psychosocial well-being: factual knowledge about the users’ behavioral response with respect to wayfinding and social interaction. The application of the method is not limited to healthcare settings only. @en

Johann Hermann Knoop publiceerde ruim twintig boeken, waaronder verschillende van respectabele omvang en enkele bestsellers. Sommige werden tot in de negentiende eeuw herdrukt. Zijn werkzame leven ligt ruim 250 jaar achter ons, maar de houding die eruit spreekt is nog steeds actueel; misschien wel meer dan in lange tijd, nu door de nieuwe media gevoede, van elke vorm van kennis gespeende massa’s overal de overgang naar een postdemocratisch bestel markeren. Als zoveel van zijn verlichte tijdgenoten was hij overtuigd van nut en noodzaak kennis uit te dragen. Dat wetenschappelijke taal bij het genereren daarvan nuttig kan zijn, stond ook voor hem buiten kijf – in zijn botanische studies maakte hij er ook zelf gebruik van. Maar in ontoegankelijke taal opgesloten, door een kleine elite gemonopoliseerde kennis beroofde de burgerij van wat Knoop als een natuurrecht zag. Al was hij voor zover na te gaan niet politiek actief, deze opvatting had destijds wel degelijk politieke implicaties. Zonder de verspreiding van kennis was het overdragen van macht en privileges naar het volk – de essentie van de democratisering die zich sinds de Franse Revolutie in fasen voltrok – zinloos en gevaarlijk. J.R. Thorbecke, auteur van Nederlands eerste democratische grondwet, wist maar al te goed dat de scheidslijn tussen democratie en het tegendeel ervan, populisme, flinterdun was; hij was beducht voor de ‘ineensmelting met de geldende meeningen en vooroordelen’ en zag het als de ‘minst gezonden en ontwikkelden toestand des denkens’.1 Ontwikkeling, het uitdragen van kennis, was in de wereld van de Verlichting een maatschappelijke en ook wetenschappelijke plicht. Knoop verstond de kunst zijn lezers mee te nemen op een zoektocht naar de fundamenten van hun natuurlijke en sociale omgeving. Zonder deze woorden te gebruiken deed hij dat om hen soevereiner te maken en in tumultueuze tijden houvast te bieden.@en