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Maarten Loopmans

Maarten Loopmans
KU Leuven | ku leuven · Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences

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98
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Publications

Publications (98)
Chapter
In deze bijdrage ontwikkelen we een Marxistisch geïnspireerde politiek economische analyse via de invalshoek van sociale reproductie. Sociale reproductie is een theoretisch perspectief dat werd geïntroduceerd door Karl Marx, maar daarna lange tijd weinig aandacht kreeg. In de volgende sectie bespreken we de inzichten uit de theorie van sociale repr...
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Drip irrigation is often considered a technological solution to increase water use efficiency and crop productivity. However, all too often, its social and institutional entanglements are ignored. This paper treats drip irrigation as a socio-material assemblage and discusses the social and institutional changes triggered by the introduction of drip...
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Rural China is experiencing rapid socioeconomic transformations, including suburbanisation and rural gentrification. In this paper, we argue that to understand these processes, we have to take into account the changes in rural land rights. Based on an analysis of a pilot case for China's rural collective commercial construction land (RCCCL) reform...
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While urbanization is a global phenomenon, it is now more rapid in the countries in the Global South. Municipal authorities of burgeoning peri-urban areas in the lower Himalaya region are struggling to deal with the new geographies of water demand. Rapidly growing towns primarily access water from upstream rural water sources, while upstream commun...
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Historical land cover (LC) maps are an essential instrument for studying long-term spatio-temporal changes of the landscape. However, manual labelling on low-quality monochromatic historical orthophotos for semantic segmentation (pixel-level classification) is particularly challenging and time consuming. Therefore, this paper proposes a methodology...
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Inequalities in access are a major concern for the management of common pool resources. In the case of irrigation water, inequalities are often explained by spatial “head-ender/tail-ender” distinctions, determined by distance to the water source. However, inequalities in access are also produced by social relations and social institutions. Drawing...
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For more than a decade, a broad social movement has organised significant opposition to the expansion of the Antwerp ring road. By linking the very mobile, intangible and unplaceable problem of traffic-related air pollution to the highly local, concrete, immobile issue of the highway, they succeeded in creating the largest mobilization against air...
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Scholars and social movements have long studied how cooperative values of solidarity and democracy can spill over to the rest of the society. However, such studies have failed to develop a sociospatial theory of solidarity. Focusing on two types of agricultural cooperatives in Cuba, this paper draws on recent geography literature on solidarity to e...
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Effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) presupposes awareness among key stakeholders on the causal factors that exacerbate disaster risks as well as a feeling of ownership over proposed DRR measures. Yet, the prevailing top-down communication of risk and the expert-centered knowledge have a limited impact in bringing significant positive change. Se...
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This paper argues how communicative planning approaches, as one of the most dominant conceptualisations of participatory planning, often ignore the embodied dimensions of participation as a socio-political learning processes. To do so, the paper theoretically traces why a Habermasian conceptualisation of political intersubjectivity fails to democra...
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This paper joins in with the discussion on the temporalities of rural gentrification. Based on a case-study in the rural town of Ağlasun in South-West Anatolia, Turkey, we compare the influx of diverse groups of seasonal gentrifiers (second home users, students, tourists) and its material and experiential effects. Although actual material displacem...
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Unprotected sex is the primary mode of HIV transmission in China. In 2014, 25.8 per cent of newly diagnosed cases were attributed to unprotected sex between men (National Health and Family Planning Commission 2015). While the majority of the nation’s new HIV infections are due to heterosexual sex, HIV is deeply tied to homosexuality in public disco...
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Hoe realistisch is het ideaal van de wetenschapper die, enkel gewapend met zijnobjectieve kennis, maatschappelijke problemen ofwijdverbreide misverstanden aande kaak stelt? Niet zo realistisch blijkt uit dit nummer. Heden ten dage opererenwetenschappers in een schemergebied waarin politiek, beleid en waarheidsvindingsoms op problematische wijze in...
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This paper contributes to the emerging literature on the geographies of encounter in contexts of diversity. Through in-depth interviews, we explore what meaning people attach to intercultural contact and how different places influence this contact. Drawing on public pedagogy theory, we show how people consider intercultural contact as a moment of i...
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Young people from lower income groups or with an immigrant background in public space are increasingly problematized in Belgium [Karsten, L., E. Kuiper, and H. Reubsaet. 2001. Van de straat? De relatie tussen jeugd en publieke ruimte verkend [Of the Street? Exploring the Relation between Youth and Public Space]. Assen: Van Gorcum; Rom, M., B. Vanob...
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In many Western European countries, concern rises that both formal mechanisms of redistribution and informal acts of charity, reciprocity and support are challenged by ethnic and cultural diversity. Against such gloomy perspectives, this paper draws on insights from sociology, geography, pedagogy and political science to argue that four traditional...
Technical Report
Report download available here (french, flemish): https://difusion.ulb.ac.be/vufind/Record/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/241705/Holdings https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1182962
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This article reports on an experiment engaging Master-level Geography students in real-life research on young people's sexuality in the context of a research methods module. This experiment was set up with the triple aim of providing students with a more hands-on learning experience of qualitative research methods, stimulating students to reflect o...
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a Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Division of Geography, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200E, Heverlee (Leuven), 3001, Belgium b Education, Culture and Society Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Andreas Vesaliusstraat, Leuven, 3000, Belgium Full reference: Nick Schuermans, Maarten P.J. Loopmans & J...
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This paper discusses the way in which public photographic depictions of places and place-based communities contribute to the construction of local identity and community building. Being public and visualised statements about what a place and the people living there are and what they are not, photographs incite public debate about place and communit...
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Shrinking cities face the challenge of strategically selecting areas for investment. This entails a movement of money as well as people and upsets the social patterns of everyday life. In Ostrava, post-socialist shrinkage interacts with identity politics towards the Roma minority, profoundly changing the image of and community life within neighbour...
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a b s t r a c t Kampala, the capital of Uganda, is one of the fastest growing African cities with annual growth rates of 5.6%. The rapid urban growth causes major socio-economic and environmental problems that lower the quality of life of the urban dwellers. A better insight in the controlling factors of the urban growth pattern is necessary to dev...
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Gentrification has become part and parcel of urban policies throughout the world. Critics have argued against those policies but they have not yet developed concrete and comprehensive alternatives. This paper seeks to remedy this omission by investigating the Belgian ‘housing contract’ experiment (2005–2007). Quite exceptionally, Belgium’s ‘housing...
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This paper analyses the changes in the Antwerp Schipperskwartier, one of the oldest and largest red light districts on the European continent. While the geography of sex work has received considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s, such analyses have focused upon the interplay between market pressures and sexual values in the production of se...
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This chapter maps new forms of contentious mobilisation around neoliberal urban policies in Antwerp, Belgium. Neoliberal urban policies are confronted with the uneasy task to match local competitiveness with collective provision and social cohesion. The upgrading of the built environment offers the opportunity to integrate both aspirations, but sim...
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The recent increase of the price of energy and the awareness of the global warming stimulated the development of on wind energy parks in many parts of the world. In Belgium the wind power capacity increased significantly over the last 5 years from a capacity of 35 MW in 2002 to 287 MW at the end of 2007. It may be expected that the number of wind t...
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Using a citywide register of community involvement, this article tests two competing theories for explaining active citizenship through neighborhood context: one that emphasizes the opportunities available in the neighborhood, whether at the level of the individual, the social environment, or the physical environment, and one that explains how acti...
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Belgium's housing policy has always been instrumental in the pillarisation process. As a consequence, two competing historical models have existed: first, a model promoted by the socialist pillar based on social rental housing in urban settings; second, the model put forward by the hegemonic Catholic party, emphasising the promotion of homeownershi...
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Observations Economic and cultural globalisation The Brussels Capital Region has experienced a significant period of economic growth over the past few decades. The service sector has been particularly responsible for this economic performance, largely comprising the European, federal and regional administrations. However, overseas investments in th...
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Vaststellingen: globale maatschappelijke ontwikkeling en effecten op Brussel Economische en culturele globalisering Het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest kende het afgelopen decennia een indrukwekkende economische bloeiperiode. Vooral de dienstensector zorgt voor deze economische prestaties. Deze bestaat voor een groot deel uit de Europese, federale e...
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This paper applies a state-theoretical perspective to a historical analysis of gentrification and urban policies in Antwerp, Belgium. Before 1970, the city experienced a period of modernist hegemony, with urban development policies characterised by slum clearing, peripheral high-rise social housing construction and inner-city office development. Af...
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What are the theoretical tools at our disposal for helping explain local participatory processes in the context of the governance of social and ethnic diversity in cities? Conventional wisdom within urban scholarship often has it that new modes of governance are, by definition, more conducive to participatory practice in cities. In this article we...
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For years, analysts have wondered about the exceptional place that Belgium, and in particular Flanders, has taken in the urban policy landscape. Contrary to neighbouring, equally strongly urbanised Western European countries, Flanders maintained a tradition of neglect towards its urban centres, linked to the hegemony of a rural-based Christian-demo...
Chapter
div> In recent decades, social and political pressures have forced a reevaluation of the roles of health and welfare professionals throughout Europe. Policy, People, and the New Professional examines those changes and their consequences. The volume reveals how public dissatisfaction with caregivers, financial pressures from government agencies, an...
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Sinds begin jaren negentig heeft zich een discours rond stadsontwikkeling ontsponnen dat nu zo vanzelfsprekend lijkt dat het nauwelijks geanalyseerd wordt. Progressief stedelijk beleid is failliet verklaard. Het spreken over de ‘achterliggende oorzaken’ van criminaliteit, drugsgebruik, dakloosheid en ander onaangepast gedrag roept nu van links tot...
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In this paper we address the revival of interest in recent years in the relevance of geographical research and highlight problems of politicization faced by researchers through cases of policy-oriented research in the UK and Belgium. We argue that geographers should be aware of the possibilities and constraints for critical engagement in the contex...
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This paper examines the relationship between electoral results and party manifestoes from a spatial perspective. The manifestoes and electoral geography of two new, allegedly «urban» parties in Flanders are compared in order to assess whether these parties might, in their ideas and consequential policies, contribute to a reinforcement of the urban...
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Theorising on politics of scale falls in two general categories: class-theoretical (actor-) and capital-theoretical or structural approaches. We discuss how notions of «path-dependency» and «critical conjunctures» can serve as a means to transcend the discrepancies between both approaches. Our analysis of the emergence of an urban policy in Flander...
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Doctor in de Wetenschappen: Geografie Afd. Sociale en Economische Geografie Departement Geografie - Geologie Faculteit Wetenschappen Doctoral thesis Doctoraatsthesis

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