How do citizens, designers, policymakers, and local entrepreneurs actually work together in ways that are inclusive, sustainable, and effective? Collaboration in urban innovation is often treated as a matter of method or structure, but what happens when timelines clash, trust falters, or understanding …

Architects, designers and artists are key players in helping people understand tomorrow’s energy systems. They bring expertise and awareness of the complex processes behind designing the energy transition which involves technology, space, people, money and time. Working at different levels, they understand …

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This article focusses on small-scale community-based care initiatives developed by citizens in small villages in rural areas in the Netherlands, with special attention to some interesting case studies in the North and South of the country. These initiatives will be contextualized. First, the demographic …

The Middle East and North Africa region has been absent form stocktaking exercises on social accountability initiatives (SAI), an umbrella term to designate citizen-led tools aimed at socio-political change. We argue that this sidelining is unwarranted, given the proliferation of participatory governance …

This chapter offers a working definition of social accountability as any citizen-led action beyond elections that aims to enhance the accountability of state actors. We view social accountability as a broad array of predominantly bottom-up initiatives, aimed at improving the quality of governance (especially …

In this chapter, we first summarise the findings from the country chapters on the multiple meanings of SA, documenting terms, translations and contrasting understandings between citizens and public officials. Second, we highlight how civil mobilisation tends to be cyclical over time and is often mediated …

This article explores the establishment of new commons initiatives from an integrated design perspective. Such a deeper understanding of the initial phase of becoming a commons -i.e. becommoning- and its design is crucial as members embark on a laborious, time-consuming and uncertain process in which …

In this paper, we apply a civic perspective and social innovation theory to examine how residents of a Dutch village experiencing rural depopulation and austerity reforms evaluate a civic initiative aimed at improving liveability, and what explains their evaluation. Using multivariate statistical analysis, …

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 …