Shopping centre siting and modal choice in Belgium: a destination based analysis

Although modal split is only one of the elements considered in decision-making on new shopping malls, it remarkably often arises in arguments of both proponents and opponents. Today, this is also the case in the debate on the planned development of three major shopping malls in Belgium. Inspired by such debates, the present study focuses on the impact of the location of shopping centres on the travel mode choice of the customers. Our hypothesis is that destination-based variables such as embeddedness in the urban fabric, accessibility and mall size influence the travel mode choice of the visitors. Based on modal split data and location characteristics of seventeen existing shopping centres in Belgium, we develop a model for a more sustainable siting policy. The results show a major influence of the location of the shopping centre in relation to the urban form, and of the size of the mall. Shopping centres that are part of a dense urban fabric, measured through population density, are less car dependent. Smaller sites will attract more cyclists and pedestrians. Interestingly, our results deviate significantly from the figures that have been put forward in public debates on the shopping mall issue in Belgium

Reconstruire la ville sur la ville - Recyclage des espaces dégradés. Etat d'avancement

audience: researcher, professional, studentRapport intermédiaire de la subvention 2004-200

Micro-finance, women’s empowerment and fertility decline in Bangladesh: How important was women’s agency?

As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued “[Bangladesh’s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality”. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women’s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The “Bangladesh paradox” of improved wellbeing despite low economic growth over the last four decades is claimed as a paradigmatic case of the spread of both modern family planning programmes and microfinance leading to women’s empowerment and fertility reduction. In this paper we show that the links between microfinance, empowerment and fertility reduction, are fraught with problems, and far from robust; hence the claimed causal links between microfinance and family planning via women’s empowerment needs to be further reconsidered

A dimensão ambiental da educação geográfica

O texto tem por objetivo delinear uma introdução ao desenvolvimento da dimensão ambiental da educação geográfica no ensino básico, em sentido de fundamentação e orientação prática. Para tanto, são relacionadas a Educação Ambiental e a geografia escolar, de um perspectiva sociopolítica ao contexto das decisões curriculares; e, neste âmbito, são postas algumas orientações pedagógico-metodológicas

Gridded birth and pregnancy datasets for Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean

Understanding the fine scale spatial distribution of births and pregnancies is crucial for informing planning decisions related to public health. This is especially important in lower income countries where infectious disease is a major concern for pregnant women and new-borns, as highlighted by the recent Zika virus epidemic. Despite this, the spatial detail of basic data on the numbers and distribution of births and pregnancies is often of a coarse resolution and difficult to obtain, with no co-ordination between countries and organisations to create one consistent set of subnational estimates. To begin to address this issue, under the framework of the WorldPop program, an open access archive of high resolution gridded birth and pregnancy distribution datasets for all African, Latin America and Caribbean countries has been created. Datasets were produced using the most recent and finest level census and official population estimate data available and are at a resolution of 30 arc seconds (approximately 1 km at the equator). All products are available through WorldPop

Emergence d'un projet de territoire pour les arrondissements de Huy et de Waremme (Belgique): outils, participation et construction

The emergence of a territory project built and shared by the actors implies the use of special methods which make it possible to transcend the private interest for the benefit of a territorialized community good. The example of the territorial project for the districts of Huy and Waremme (Belgium, 2007) makes it possible to put forward useful and diversified methods to cause and frame the debates, while taking into account the number, the representativeness and the diversity of the actors in a strongly diversified territory. It deals with the integration of the territorial observation in a territories development process and in the confrontation of the theoretical and pragmatic approaches.L'émergence d'un projet de territoire construit et partagé par les acteurs implique l'utilisation de méthodes particulières qui permettent de dépasser l'intérêt particulier au profit d'un bien commun territorialisé. L'exemple du projet territorial pour les arrondissements de Huy et de Waremme (Belgique, 2007) permet de mettre en exergue des méthodes utiles et diversifiées pour susciter et encadrer les débats, tout en prenant en compte le nombre, la représentativité et la diversité des acteurs dans un territoire fortement diversifié. Celui-ci traite de l'intégration de la veille territoriale dans un processus de développement des territoires et de la confrontation entre les approches théoriques et pragmatique

TERRITORIAL RECONVERSION AND TERRITORIAL KNOWLEDGE: ADDED-VALUE OF A TERRITORIAL INTELLIGENCE PROCESS IN FLEMALLE (Belgium).

International audienceThe areas of industrial tradition have to face many challenges, among which the reduction of unemployment, soil depollution, economic redeployment and urban revival are important issues. These basins are singularly affected by world and regional dynamics, in front of which the local actors, first concerned, feel penniless. More generally, one can consider that local territories are subjected to increasingly complex constraints and dynamics (delocalization, metropolisation, exurbanisation...). This makes essential the search for innovating solutions in order to ensure a harmonious development of territories respecting sustainable development principles