The ‘Grand Challenges’ of our times, like climate change, resource depletion, global inequity, and the destruction of wildlife and biodiversity can only be addressed by innovating cities. Despite the options of tele-working, tele-trading and tele-amusing, that allow people to participate in ever …

When citizens’ initiatives stop: a case-study in the rural areas of the Netherlands

Different unexpected combinations between industry, local government, private participants, educational institutes and artists resulted past year in challenging opportunities for transitions in urban and rural areas. The power of art with the perspective of the artist approaching challenges evokes a …

When citizens’ initiatives stop: a case-study in the rural areas of the Netherlands

In the shift towards the Big Society, it is widely proclaimed that citizen participation and citizens’ initiatives are indispensable to maintaining services that used to be run by local or regional governments. Despite the increased interest in citizens’ initiatives, research has scarcely debated what …

Plattelandsparlement is het jaarlijkse congres van de landelijke vereniging voor kleine kernen in Nederland (LVKK)

The goal of this paper is to present the emergence of a new cooperative model for sustainable regional development through social enterprise, rooted in a historical context of societal change in the Netherlands. Our case study is the Gebiedscoöperatie Westerkwartier (GCW), a large-scale area and integrated …

Rural children are a largely understudied population in language and literacy research, despite the fact that these children often enter school with delays in their language development. Since most rural areas suffered from so-called selective rural outmigration, many parents in rural areas are lower …

Cairo. Home to twenty million people, bursting at the seams. An archipelago of planned and unplanned districts. How should this metropolis prepare for future growth? ‘Delta Strikes Back’ focuses on the rapidly urbanising agricultural landscape within the Nile Delta. Environmental pressure, ‘water wars’ …