Tag: City

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Commuters dissatisfaction

Commuting to work is only in few cases a choice. The stress associated with commuting is not negligible. Most employees report low satisfaction levels with commuting to jobs and subsequently this has a negative impact on overall satisfaction with one’s job. A study on urban China shows that employees on formal work contracts can often compensate with shorter weekly working time or higher earnings from work, but only partially. The negative impact of commuting on job satisfaction is rather sticky and substantially higher for employees on informally employed workers in urban China, who do not have resident permits in urban areas. With millions of workers commuting daily to work beyond China, the evidence suggests to take commuters’ dissatisfaction more seriously. Public transport infrastructure has to keep pace with more people working in urban areas, but willing to accept long commuting distances. If we add commuting time to working time, the long hours of work over years constitute a considerable health hazard.

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Rural urban interrelationship

Cities are no isolated microcosms. They rely on being delivered a huge range of products. Cities have been markets, hubs or platforms for exchange with their surroundings, neighboring communities as well as distant ones. Historically, quite many cities have built walls to limit access and strictly regulated access. In the 21st century with low levels of fertility, the demographic pressure to leave the countryside for jobs is less pressing, but many regions face the shrinkage of the countryside’s population. The interrelationship between the urban centers and the rural surroundings has to be studied and addressed due to the far-reaching consequences for both. Transportation into cities needs public infrastructure which can handle the necessary flows and exchanges of people and products. For too many decades we have focused on an either/or cleavage of an apparent dichotomy of urban versus rural. It is about time to correct this bias and take the rural-urban interdependence more systematically into account. 

uri urban rural interrelationship in food and drink

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Stress in the City

Before the stress in the city makes you sick, try new coping strategies. Of course, you cannot avoid the stress of hotspots like busy crossings or noisy construction sites. And these are only the visible stressors not to mention fine dust particles or mixtures of fragrances. Scientists have started to address these issues under the title of neuro-urbanism. This topic is part of a broader agenda on public mental health which addresses the rise in mental disorders globally. Expanding urbanization is considered a major driver of an often overwhelming cognitive load in cities. Growing into it helps, but many move to cities for professional reasons or simply a job being largely unprepared to the practice of daily commuting for years. Several potential stressors tend to cumulate: High Social density, broad diversity in aesthetics as well as social structure, relationships, social participation or public transport as part of mobility make cities interesting or hard to cope with.

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Healthy intervention

The shift back from a city which favors mobility on wheels to a city where more people move using on their feet is healthy intervention. Paris has succeeded in many inner city areas to improve the „walkability“. On Sundays joggers pass in groups where previously cars were rushing across the city. Noise levels and pollution have been reduced which attracts even more tourists. Many more than the city could handle with too much space occupied by cars and trucks. Security levels are increased by restrictions to car access to some roads and people feel safe and relaxed even in the city center of a metropolitan city. Besides the effect that more tourists come to enjoy this atmosphere, those living and working in Paris feel less forced to leave the city over weekends due to unhealthy pollution levels. Access from suburbs by public transport runs at high frequencies also on weekends. This brings people into the center for events, shopping and event shopping.

Palais de Justice Paris Seine 2026-8

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Dancing alone

In 2026 it is possible to step into the old telephone box, but to use it as discotheque with music. You can choose your favorite song and dance to it inside the box and photos are taken from yourself to take home. Whereas sociologists have long argued that individualism can go to far in modern societies, the solo disco-box is a telling example of how monetizing of music, dancing and enjoying music can reach levels where people no longer realize how far we have gone beyond „bowling alone“. We do social activities alone and then share the images of the pseudo social activity. Room for social or socializing activities does not come for free, but creating meeting spaces even in crowded cities is worthwhile. Dancing in public rather than a box might be enjoyable for others too.

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Water in Parks

In 2026-7 and a 3rd hear wave approaching, the real luxury consists in water in inner cities. As a source of refreshment and cooling when temperatures rise, water provides a natural source to cool down nearby people, buildings as well as any trees. The wisdom of a hundred years ago appears again as a major solution as global warming progresses. Evaporation of water is cooling. Some simple facts deserve to be repeated over and over again as urban planning seems to have forgotten such simple physics. We have think about a lot of green and blue spots again in our cities to achieve the much needed cooling effects. (Image: Viktoria-Luise Platz, Berlin 2026-7)

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Cool shelters

In many big cities the metro lines and particularly some of the stations can provide cool shelters during hot days. Reducing the speed of traffic reduces the airflow and heat of acceleration and braking. More home office work if employees have adequate cooling at home reduces emissions additionally. The historic Kreuzberg-Metro-Station, nowadays called “Platz der Luftbrücke” is big enough to accommodate many people who are in need of shelter for whatever purpose. Underground you do not even hear much from the busy traffic above. More efforts to brighten up the station could create an urban space which invites to rest in hot days rather than rush around the city. Climate change will ask us to come up with many innovative and unorthodox solutions as part of public health initiatives.

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Beware Albedo

At times of high radiation from the sun, we suffer from high “albedo” values surrounding us. Albedo is scaled between 0 (black) and 100 (white) and is a measure of the reflection of light. Dark surfaces have a low Albedo, which means they absorb a lot of light and store this energy in form of heating. On the contrary, white surfaces or reflector materials like mirrors absorb very little of light as they reflect the light and, therefore store very little of it as heat.
In housing or urban planning this is an important indicator to take into consideration when planning for summer heat reduction, for example. Inner cities with dense construction, lots of windows, which in most cases absorb rather than reflect sun light, Light absorption and storage during the day will contribute to heat urban environments and inner cities during summer nights. This might be comfortable during winter, but in hot summer days the high reflection value creates additional discomfort.
Greening of cities is a powerful answer as vegetation absorbs the sunlight, but does not store it in form of heat. The glaciers and huge snow fields have shielded us from the earth heating up too fast in the past. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge about “albedo” has lead us to undervalue these shielding effects. Light absorption by the earth is an additional driver of climate change in form of global warming. (Image: Brussels, Forest, Park Duden Community Gardening 2026-5)

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Ensor Home

There are few artists who stayed in their home for almost all their life. James Ensor was a personality who was profoundly attached and continually attracted to his native city of Ostend. After a short and unsuccessful spell at the Brussels art academy, he returned to his parents’ home and due to a heritage from an uncle, he could live in a nearby house, which also served him as his atelier. Although I did not come across documents that showed he had traveled a lot, nowadays his art work is spread across the globe. The seaside resort of Ostend was a real tourist destination and, therefore, many famous people of the 1st half of the century passed by and met with Ensor there. Not only fellow artists, but also scientists like Albert Einstein. Critical minds and people searching beyond the trodden paths must have been attracted to him, a personality who dared to challenge conventional painting and techniques of his time. A reconstruction of his atelier and several animations give a lively modern touch to his work and living style. My take home message from the Ensor Home: The search for inspiration might be just around the corner. 

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Dual Task Processing

Extensive research into dual task performance shows that training of 2 tasks simultaneously can indeed enhance performance. New research by Schubert et al. (2025) indicates that there latent and persistent bottlenecks to the brain’s processing of such dual tasks, let alone multi-tasking. Out of own anecdotal exercise with “object tracking and touch” (gaming on tablet) a learning effect arises. However, it is unclear, whether this exercise translates to normal traffic situations in inner city situations for pedestrians or cyclists. The experiment of a dual task, combining a visual-manual and an auditory-verbal task, indicates also training effects, but the brain appears to return to sequential processing rather than simultaneous processing as much as it can. Such a dual task test may consist in juggling while singing a song or even leading a conversation with somebody. Quite a challenge or exhausting mental training even for those with a history of juggling objects.