Urbanization & Transition of Cities

With their (ecological) footprint cities have a huge effect on the entire ecology of the planet. Their scale creates new dynamics, new complexity and new simultaneity of events and processes – physical, social and economic. With this website I would like to contribute my ideas about complex adaptive urban systems, ecologic sustainable urbanisme and social, cultural and economic urban development. Today there’s still time to share knowledge and ideas. Tomorrow it’s time to act.

Background

Arie Voorburg, consultant and (guest) lecturer & researcher at several universities. Traveled and gained life experience as an officer in the (merchant) navy. Once ashore, he immersed himself in studies of system ecology (co-evolutionary  complex systems, quantum biology), biophysics and philosophy and became fascinated by the urban phenomenon; the city in all its facets. Active for 30 years in the fields of ecology, biodiversity, sustainable development and complex –urban- systems.
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As cities expand in a transnational economy driven by interrelated dynamics (social, economic, financial, formal and informal, cultural, etc.) and through a continuous exchange of materials, energy, knowledge and abilities, they reconstruct ecological systems. Their scale creates new dynamics, new complexity and new simultaneity of events and processes – physical, social and economic. They host intense and complex interactions between different demographic, social, political, economic and ecological processes.
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Lectures & Research

Bio-ecologic inspired design principles (Biomimicry and bioclimatic design), Evolving Economy (Biobased, Circular, Inclusive Economy), Talent development (education and 21st century skills), Disruptive Technologies and new finance models.
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Drive

Globalization 4.0 has only just begun, but we are already vastly underprepared for it. Clinging to an outdated mindset and tinkering with our existing processes and institutions will not do. Rather, we need to redesign them from the ground up, so that we can capitalize on the new opportunities that await us, while avoiding the kind of disruptions that we are witnessing today.
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Time is running out

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ENTANGLED HABITATION, COHABITATION IN THE MORE-THAN-HUMAN CITY Landing in the Anthropocene, where our actions are leaving traces on the very rooted fabric of the planet, we are called to the challenge of moving towards a postanthropocentric paradigm. The anthropocentrism that our species has imposed on all others has unbalanced our position within nature, founded on what we often see as an evolutionary success: intrinsically human-centered, acting and developing as a continuous transformation of matter into products and processes, in a steady flow of supply and exploitation and extermination of animals and plants. But the effects of this imbalance are becoming…

We’ve been warned before.

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When The Limits to Growth was first published in 1972, most economists, along with many industrialists, politicians, and Third World advocates raised their voices in outrage at the suggestion that population growth and material consumption need to be reduced by deliberate means. Over the years, Limits was attacked by many who didn’t understand or misrepresented its assertions, dismissing it as Malthusian hyperbole. But nothing that has happened in the last 50 years has invalidated the book’s warnings. We are experiencing the symptoms of a world in overshoot, where we are drawing on the world’s resources faster than they can be restored, and we…

 NO MERE ILLUSION

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It is increasingly apparent that superficially separate global crises are synchronizing—occurring at the same time or in quick succession. Their combined impacts are both greater than and different from the sum of the harms they would create in isolation, were they not so deeply interconnected. Yet the causal mechanisms that produce this synchronization remain opaque and underexplored. A confluence of ecological, social, technological, financial-economic, natural and other forces are interacting These unpredictable interactions are causing future shocks of ever greater frequency and amplitude. Today’s crises simultaneously span ecological, natural, political, economic and technological systems, with ever increasing unpredictability, rapidity and…

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring  (1962) goal of a toxics-free future seems a very distant prospect.

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Novel entities are defined as new substances, new forms of existing substances and modified life forms, including chemicals and other new types of engineered materials or organisms not previously known to the Earth system as well as naturally occurring elements (for example, heavy metals) mobilized by anthropogenic activities. Novel means new in the geological sense, that is, created, introduced, or recirculated by humans. The entities are intentionally and unintentionally manufactured chemicals, engineered materials, and their transformation products, that have the potential to cause effects on vital Earth System processes as well as naturally occurring elements and materials mobilized in new…