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 Clinging to an outdated mindset and tinkering with our existing processes and institutions will not do.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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THE END OF HISTORY ILLUSION

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The ecological era we find ourselves in — whether we like it or not, and whether we recognize it or not — makes it necessary to rethink and revaluate our relationship with nature and technology. The world has entered a new era of rapid and major change. Significant shifts are occurring in global economic power, technology, urban growth and through Earth System changes that pose existential threats to humanity, and our relationship with nature on which human life depends. Given current trajectories, transformation of human societies in some form is inevitable. It is, however, not clear whether global transformations can…

Raining down on us

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The more we destabilize the processes and systems that maintain the stability and resilience of our planet, the more our civilization is at risk. For millions of years temperatures on Earth have changed, significantly, there have been extinction events, but the planet it still here. During those millions of years, it’s our civilization that wasn’t there. Our world as we know it, including all of its history, goes back only about 12000 years. And this period has been characterized by a miraculously stable climate, that has allowed for the development of the agriculture, cities, economies and human societies that we…

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…