According to Kaplan's (1995) Attentional Restorative Theory and Stress Recovery Theory (1981), nature has restorative effects on Mental Fatigue (MF). A report published by Urbanization and Health...Show moreAccording to Kaplan's (1995) Attentional Restorative Theory and Stress Recovery Theory (1981), nature has restorative effects on Mental Fatigue (MF). A report published by Urbanization and Health showed that in 2010, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas and that this percentage will only increase. In addition, more and more people report suffering from MF (Cox et al., 2017). This study examined whether a natural environment has restorative effects on subjective MF in a videogame as well. 86 participants were pseudo- randomly assigned to a natural (N = 41) or urban (N = 45) environment while playing the videogame. The PANAS-X fatigue questionnaire was used to determine the MF levels before and after participants played the videogame. Subjective MF was expected to be significantly lower in the nature group. The results were compared using repeated-measures ANOVA. Participants in the natural condition and the urban condition both reported lower MF mean differences. The difference did not appear to be due to the condition in which they were assigned. In both conditions, the reported MF mean levels were significantly lower after playing the videogame.Show less
Urbanization is seen as one of the leading changes related to health. This is, among other things, due to increased densities of populations and buildings. This results in increased light, air and...Show moreUrbanization is seen as one of the leading changes related to health. This is, among other things, due to increased densities of populations and buildings. This results in increased light, air and noise pollution and the decrease of green spaces. Living in urbanized areas has been negatively associated with mental health in previous studies. Furthermore literature research found that highly urbanized areas are more segregated and have a higher percentage of non-native citizens. Non-western immigrants in the Netherlands have found to have more mental health problems than Dutch citizens. Issues about mental well-being in the multicultural urban environment are complex and therefore demands for an interdisciplinary approach. This study aims to give a multidisciplinary insight on mental health by researching the urban environment and mental health among different cultural groups. Urban environment is measured through satisfaction as well as residential density and land-use mix. With the use of an online survey this study gathered data of 34 Dutch, Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese citizens that live in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague to make comparisons between the groups and cities. Analyses on a cross-sectional questionnaire study provided significant evidence that increased land-use mix and density of facilities moderately relates to a higher satisfaction of the environment. No evidence was found that cultural background, cultural identity or city of residence relates to mental well-being and satisfaction of the urban environment. The research can also not conclude a relationship between residential density and satisfaction or mental well-being. Information from this research provides an additional perspective for urban planners to take in regard the impact of the urban environment on health. For future research we suggest to study the relationship between the urban environment and mental well-being through a longitudinal study and advise a further focus on cultural identity in contemporary cities.Show less
Political trust is seen as a requirement for democratic regimes to function well. In the Netherlands, polling data indicates that trust is lower in less densely populated provinces, while remaining...Show morePolitical trust is seen as a requirement for democratic regimes to function well. In the Netherlands, polling data indicates that trust is lower in less densely populated provinces, while remaining high nation-wide. This study aims to identify if living in less urbanized - low population density - areas in the Netherlands have lower levels of political trust, and if so look at potential explanations. I investigate the two most specific levels of the framework by Norris (2011, 2017) of political trust: trust in regime institutions as well as trust in incumbent office-holders. All analyses were performed on four waves of data from the DPES (2006 - 2017). After controlling for education, religion, gender and age, urbanization did not improve the prediction of political trust in either level. One remarkable result was that education and age had opposite influences in trust in regime institutions versus trust in incumbent office-holders. These differences demonstrate the value of Norris’ framework: the type of relation between an underlying factor and political trust may depend on the type of political trust considered.Show less
Today, art from China is very different from that of the 1980s and 1990s. Contemporary Chinese urban art is critical of the modernization China has been experiencing the past decades. It is mostly...Show moreToday, art from China is very different from that of the 1980s and 1990s. Contemporary Chinese urban art is critical of the modernization China has been experiencing the past decades. It is mostly done in the media of photography, sculpture and installation art. Most obviously this criticism can be seen in the cityscape. This cityscape is most times a pastiche of construction, combining into a vast city. Many installation artists construct such a city by using real cities as model, and they often use consumer items as material. But also many photographers create cityscape montages; they use digital software to combine photographs of the urban space into one big collage. There are five themes that prominently express the artists’ concerns over China’s urbanization: futurism, globalization, negativity, sinification, and disconnection. Artists apply (often several of) these themes onto the urban space they depict.Show less
