Posts

Youth talks to youth
Policymakers and politicians love statistics. The statistics are often presented as the truth, while the research methods, the way of counting and the type of respondents often have a major impact on the real meaning of a statistic.

Civic economy
Mutual involvement, active citizenship and the ability to manage for themselves of inhabitants. Themes that, also prompted by cutbacks, become more and more prominent. But does this ‘civil society’ exist in the Netherlands? What can we expect of the self-organizing capacity of inhabitants?  And to what extent can a local authority or corporation stimulate or facilitate this?

The city from above
At a certain point, each Dutch Urban Planner or Human Geographer has to face it. At least, it used to be compulsory study material: the book ‘Ruimtelijke ordening’ by Van der Cammen and De Klerk. The book represents the history of the planned city and shows how tight The Netherlands is regulated. It does so by using descriptions of a great number of examples of spatial planning and many memoranda. I have no idea whether this book is still compulsory, but at the time I thought it was dry stuff b…