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 Clinging to an outdated mindset and tinkering with our existing processes and institutions will not do.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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Biosphere emergency

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THE BIOSPHERIC EMERGENCY, ANTHROPOCENE SYNDROME Gone is the relative stability and predictability of the past 12,000 years as the established patterns and regularity of Holocene phenology begin to fall into chaos. While some cosmic constants remain such as the cycles of day and night, the moon’s influence on the tides, the date of the solstices and the length of time the Earth takes to go around the sun, many other patterns and rhythms of Earth phenology are undergoing major change. Culturally, the Anthropocene is generally recognized to be an era in which human activity has grossly disturbed the natural environment. …

What’s the point?

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I have always been led by a desire to understand life; I went from ecosystems to biophysics to quantum physics and on my way life slipped through my fingers. What’s the point? If the universe is just machinery, a set of differential equations acting on initial conditions, and we are but blips of complexity in an uncaring universe, temporarily self-aware conglomerates of particles that will soon be washed away by entropy increase, then why spend time figuring out just exactly how insignificant our existence is? What’s the meaning of life if there’s no purpose to it? We all have to…

Rethinking the fundamental objective of our urban future and their destinies.

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Humanity is making tremendous progress. It is the best time ever to be alive. Why does no one know it? Cities are a dense network of interconnected systems of increasing complexity, all of which use feedback information to exist in dynamic equilibrium. A new era of innovation for our urban future. A moment of recognition/realization The city as the general form of human settlement, as the ecological niche of our species, belongs to the world of antifragility. The city as a system has proven through history to be capable to adapt, self-organize, improve and take advantage of the unpredictable, in…

Symbiosis nature – humanity – technology

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The Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago with the Sun and rest of the solar system. Life is known to have appeared a billion years later, though that may be a conservative appraisal. No matter the exact date of life’s formation, very soon after its appearance, co-evolution began in which life and the Earth began changing together. The biosphere, which is the sum-total of living organisms, began exerting strong feedback forces on the other geospheres of air (atmosphere), water (hydrosphere), ice (cryosphere), and land (lithosphere). Together, the bio and geospheres formed a coupled Earth system that has evolved as a…