In the context of public budget cuts and rural areas facing depopulation and aging, local governments increasingly encourage citizen engagement in addressing local livability issues. This paper examines the non-engagement of mid-aged and elderly residents (45+ years old) in civic initiatives that intend …

Background Refugees encounter texts such as course books, pamphlets and exams during mandatory integration in the Netherlands. Texts present explicit or implicit messages to refugees on “successful” integration and citizenship. The What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach from Carol Bacchi, …

Cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change, and there is an urgent need to make them more resilient. The Climatescan adaptation tool www.climatescan.nl is applied as an interactive tool for knowledge exchange and raising awareness on Nature-Bases Solutions (NBS) targeting young professionals …

In this chapter, the authors elaborate on serious games and playful interactions in modern scientific practices, and on the way they can engender mutual scientific growth. They use a research-through-design approach, in which three possible scenarios and prototypes are studied to envisage the new role …

Emerging during the negotiations for the unratified Constitutional Treaty and officially launched with the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Citizens' Initiative allows citizens to invite the European Commission to propose legislation to the European Parliament and the Council based on an idea which gathers …

Citizen science – the active participation of lay people in research – may yield crucial local knowledge and increase research capacity. Recently, there is growing interest to understand benefits for citizen scientists themselves. We studied the perceived impacts of participation in a public health citizen …

In the Netherlands and Europe, there exist approaches to refugee (re)settlement where asylum seekers face long waiting periods, in large-scale centres often isolated from Dutch society, with little-to-no opportunity to structure their day or participate in activities which bring meaning to their lives. …

As web technology and (big) data continue to transform how we organize ourselves, scholarly research increasingly zooms in on the socio-material conditions of citizen participation and public engagement, the objects and devices that organize publics. Where social issues may often be the driver of such …

Over the last few years, the term “smart cities” has gained traction in academic, industry, and policy debates about the deployment of new media technologies in urban settings. It is mostly used to describe and market technologies that make city infrastructures more efficient, and personalize the experience …