The Vital City
Please join us for our next Monday departmental seminar on the 20th of December from 15:00 to 16:00 at the Porter Auditorium.
https://tau-ac-il.zoom.us/j/83229921170
Dr. Amit Birenboim, Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Vital City
In its early days, the modern city was characterised by poor living conditions which resulted in epidemics and poor health outcomes of its inhabitants. With the implementation of sanitation and public health regulations, starting the mid-19th century, urban health in the industrialised world was improving faster than rural health. During the 20th century cities have typically become healthier than rural places. This situation is now known as the urban advantage in health. However, while cities in the developed world are generally healthy, they still face various structural anomalies that require the attention of urban professionals, academics and of the public. These anomalies include, among others, sense of alienation of residents, lack of security, unhealthy lifestyles such as sedentary behaviour and exposure to stressful situations and environments. The lecture includes two distinct parts. In the first one the rationale behind the idea of a vital city will be presented and explained. In the second part, new methods for the investigation of vital cities will be introduced. This includes data collection methods that allow close examination of the moment-by-moment interaction between people and urban environments. The lecture will present methods such as location tracking technologies (e.g., GPS) that record human activity in high tempo-spatial resolutions, portable sensors that can measure human exposure to the environment and virtual reality tools.
