Browsing by Subject "Belgium"
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Item Belgium - Sustainable horticulture crop production(2010-11-28) Price, ValerieItem Changes in travel behavior during the transition from secondary to higher education: A case study from Ghent, Belgium(2018) De Paepe, Leen; De Vos, Jonas; Van Acker, Veronique; Witlox, FrankOver the past few decades, the number of students attending universities and university colleges in Belgium has increased considerably. In many Western countries, this trend is accompanied by a decline in car use among young adults. Therefore, it is important to have better insights into how travel behavior changes during the transition from secondary to higher education. This research fits into the larger framework of mobility biographies, where travel behavior is analyzed over a life course, taking into account certain life events. Hierarchical logistic regressions are used to analyze car use data for mandatory activities (going to school and grocery shopping) and leisure activities (fun shopping) of 404 first-year university and university college students in Ghent (Belgium). The results indicate that holding a driver’s license or owning a car facilitates car use irrespective of students’ residential location and lifestyle, and this is true for all activities. The built environment only seems to become an important factor explaining car use when students are attending university or university college. The influence of lifestyles appears to become somewhat more important for leisure activities, such as fun shopping. The emerging lifestyle of students appears to become more individual and more independent from the lifestyle of others, especially the parents. This is supported by the declining influence of social networks, notably the family.Item Commuting in Belgian metropolitan areas(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2010) Verhetsel, Ann; Thomas, Isabelle; Beelen, MarjanIn order to understand patterns of urban commuter flows, insight is required into urban spatial structure (and vice versa). The present contribution first provides a concise overview of the theoretical perspectives from which economists and geographers approach commuting issues. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the classical spatial-economic urban models and how they explain commuter movements. We conduct a number of cluster analyses from which we are able to derive a commuting typology of city region areas. We conclude that distance (which also comprises journey time and proximity of traffic infrastructure), housing characteristics, housing environment, and income continue to play key roles in commuting patterns in the metropolitan areas under consideration.Item A North Wind: The New Realism of the French-Walloon Cinéma du Nord(2013-11) Niessen, NielsThis project explains the reinvention of earlier realist practices of depicting everyday lives of ordinary people for the globalized digital era. The cinéma du Nord is an exemplary instantiation of this global new realist tendency. I coin the cinéma du Nord as a transnational regional cinema rooted in the French North and the Belgian South. Once industrial centers, these regions suffered severe crises since the 1950s, when their coal mines were depleted and their industries superannuated. The cinéma du Nord should be understood in the context of the transition from an industrial economy to a postindustrial economy in which existence has become precarious for many. I argue that films such as Rosetta (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 1999) and L'humanité (Bruno Dumont, 1999) have emerged from the endeavor of Wallonia and the French North to reimagine themselves as European centers after decades of recession. Ultimately, I locate the cinéma du Nord within a wider wave of global new realism (e.g., the films of Jia Zhangke and Kelly Reichardt). I argue that in its most compelling forms the new realist humanism renders intelligible the question, "what is a life in the face of the waning power of traditional and modern institutions?"Item Why people use their cars while the built environment imposes cycling(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Van Acker, Veronique; Derudder, Ben; Witlox, FrankResiding in a high-density, diverse, and accessible neighborhood tends to be associated with less car use, more public transport, and more cycling and walking. However, this does not hold for all people because of differences in personal perceptions and preferences. This paper, therefore, analyzes spatial (mis)match, or the correspondence between perceptions of someone’s residence and the objectively measured spatial characteristics of that residence. Based on a sample for Flanders, Belgium, we found that people tend to overrate the urbanized character of their residence. Among urbanites, (mis)matched spatial perceptions do not influence mode choice. Mode choices remain mainly influenced by urban characteristics and not by personal perceptions as such. However, the influence of spatial (mis)match becomes more important among rural dwellers and, especially, suburbanites. The travel consequences of (mis)matched spatial perceptions thus clearly depend on the residential neighborhood type.