In recent years, both scientists and the general population gained awareness of the deep entanglement between finances, health, and well-being. People cannot be reduced to a set of problems to be tackled independently, thinking that somehow these solutions add up to solve the problem as a whole.4 Researchers …

Medium-sized cities across Europe are increasingly and actively attracting skilled migrants. How can these cities best manage the challenges of internationalisation? That is to say: How can they attract, facilitate and integrate skilled migrants, enabling them to contribute to the regional culture and …

In cities worldwide, tools for citizen-centric local initiatives to facilitate collaboration and joint decision-making are deployed as alternatives to the use of large corporate social media platforms such as Facebook. These community platforms often aim to empower users and enable civic participation …

Social robots have been introduced in different fields such as retail, health care and education. Primary education in the Netherlands (and elsewhere) recently faced new challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and quarantines including students falling behind and teachers burdened with …

A long time ago, well before the COVID-19 pandemic, a sad, dark thing clawed its way into our social media feeds: depression memes. These memes, shared on social platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan, and TikTok, date back to as early as 2016, although it’s hard to tell precisely. What …

This chapter discusses the sharing economy in the Netherlands, focussing on shared mobility and gig work platforms. The Netherlands has been known as one of the pioneers in the sharing economy. Local initiatives emerged at the beginning of the 2010s. International players such as Uber, UberPop, and Airbnb …

The present social and environmental challenges, the impact of climate change andthe pandemic, revealed the urgency and the opportunity to rethink urban designthrough its renewed spaces and temporalities. The pandemic offered a ‘natural exper-iment’ to explore and develop new perspectives, making public …

Background Combined lifestyle interventions (CLI) aim to help clients with weight-related health risks to change their physical activity levels and dietary behaviors. These long-term (2 year) interventions are mostly delivered through face-to-face sessions with limited use of eHealth technologies. To …

In addition to formal welfare institutions, there are many informal initiatives in the social landscape that are engaged in social work. These informal actors offer help, care or support to their members and visitors, and/or fulfil a bridging function to formal welfare organisations. They fulfil this …

Background Evidence about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on existing health inequalities is emerging. This study explored differences in mental health, sense of coherence (SOC), sense of community coherence (SOCC), sense of national coherence (SONC), and social support between low and high socioeconomic …