Antwerp City Wastescapes. Historic interplays between waste & urban development.

This paper analyses waste management and the production of space over time in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. By reconstructing how shifting waste practices simultaneously reshape our urban environments at multiple scales, this paper also articulates historic interplays between waste management, urban development and planning practices. Benefiting from available waste processes and materials is a practice that disappeared during industrialisation scale jumps and more linear processes of urbanisation and consumption indeed dominate the current practices. But cities like Antwerp are rethinking these resource consumptive processes and orienting their policies towards what is generally labelled as a resource independent ‘circular economy’. In order to be resilient for climate change, Antwerp’s centralized and heavily engineered and stressed waste collection and treatment installations of the last century require revision, if not systemic redefinition. After a century of dumping on peripheral locations, bottom-up initiatives such as repair cafés, zero waste shops, green schools and even supermarkets are changing the cultural appreciation of ‘waste’ in Antwerp by pulling ‘waste practices’ back into the city and activating social community spaces. What can we learn from the historic interplays between waste and urban development in Antwerp at the eve of Antwerp’s next –circular- waste geography

Some discussions on the Read Paper "Beyond subjective and objective in statistics" by A. Gelman and C. Hennig

This note is a collection of several discussions of the paper "Beyond subjective and objective in statistics", read by A. Gelman and C. Hennig to the Royal Statistical Society on April 12, 2017, and to appear in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A

Uncovering the Holistic Pathways to Circular Cities—The Case of Alberta, Canada

The notion of circularity has gained significant attention from governments of many cities across the world. The approaches to circular cities may range from narrower perspectives that see a circular city as the simple sum of circular economy initiatives to those more holistic that aim to integrate the whole urban system. Several researchers proposed frameworks that would guide cities to take a holistic perspective. This manuscript selects two frameworks and examines through them whether and to what extent broader and more holistic approaches to circular cities are being developed in practice. First, circularity principles, the scope of circular activities, and the concrete circular actions developed in the case study are read through Williams's approach to circular resource management. Second, the spatial circularity drivers framework of Marin and De Meulder is used to elucidate different sustainability framings and spatial practices that dominate contemporary conceptualisations of circularity. These two lenses are applied to five municipalities in Alberta (Canada) that have decided to develop strategies for 'shifting the paradigm' and transitioning to circular cities in 2018. Our study aims to investigate how holistic their roadmaps to circular cities are, and what changes are necessary to move towards more integrated approaches

Untangling Stakeholder Dynamics in Circularity of the Built Environment: A Comics-Based Approach

Comics are a known method to visually link characters to context through time. This article explores the medium of comics to untangle stakeholder dynamics in the context of a complex theme such as circularity of the built environment. Circularity of the built environment tailors concepts of circular economy to the field of construction and urban development. Relying mostly on optimization strategies, context-specific characteristics such as stakeholder agency and spatial preconditions are often disregarded as resources in the design of circularity projects. This results in one-size-fits all circularity instruments formalized in generic toolboxes. Circularity instruments should additionally engage with stakeholders, recognizing complexity and surfacing the resourcefulness of the territory. This comics series follows the researcher from analysis to design hypothesis, clarifying complexity at hand from the researcher perspective, including stakeholder agendas, spatial conditions, barriers and opportunities. Part of an ongoing action-research project, the self-reflective comics show parts of a researcher’s journey untangling circularity in the built environment in its multiple stakeholder dimensions. It includes data sourced from mixed method research, such as ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and archival research on two Flemish industry parks, Kortrijk-Noord and Leuven-Haasrode. These comics function as a narrative assemblage method for critical analysis, bringing together different data sources, and rendering our research process on circularity contextual and visual. Additionally, the comic allows us to communicate, challenge, and begin to design with (hidden) stakeholder agency

Lattice strain and tilt mapping in stressed Ge microstructures using X-ray Laue micro-diffraction and rainbow-filtering

Micro-Laue diffraction and simultaneous rainbow-filtered micro-diffraction were used to measure accurately the full strain tensor and the lattice orientation distribution at the sub-micron scale in highly strained, suspended Ge micro-devices. A numerical approach to obtain the full strain tensor from the deviatoric strain measurement alone is also demonstrated and used for faster full strain mapping. We performed the measurements in a series of micro-devices under either uniaxial or biaxial stress and found an excellent agreement with numerical simulations. This shows the superior potential of Laue micro-diffraction for the investigation of highly strained micro-devices.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figure

Evolution temporelle de la morphologie des rides de sable lors de leur formation en canal à houle

Les travaux présentés concernent des études expérimentales sur la dynamique de formation des rides de sable à partir d'un fond sédimentaire plat soumis à une houle régulière en canal à houle. Dès les premiers stades de formation, les longueurs d'ondes et les hauteurs de la totalité des rides présentes sur l'ensemble du réseau sont disponibles, permettant une étude statistique fiable des caractéristiques de rides. L'analyse de ces répartitions permet de caractériser le réseau au cours du temps. De plus, l'évolution des masses de rides ainsi que celle des cambrures locales sont obtenues. L'étude de ce dernier paramètre s'avère être précieuse car montre une stabilité bien supérieure aux longueurs d'ondes et hauteurs. L'objectif est de caractériser la dynamique de formation des réseaux de rides