The literature on responsive regulation argues that citizens should be involved in regulatory practices to avoid capture between regulator and regulatee. It also argues that including citizens can add an important perspective to regulatory practices. However, we know little about how citizens' perspectives are brought into regulatory practices. This paper draws on existing qualitative research to compare and analyze four cases of experimental participatory regulation in Dutch health care, focusing on the theoretical assumptions that citizen involvement (a) prevents capture, and (b) stimulates the inclusion of new perspectives. Our results show that involving citizens in regulation can increase transparency and trust in regulatory practices and familiarizes regulators with other perspectives. It is, however, up to the regulator to work on deriving benefits from that involvement—not only the practical work of organizing participatory regulation, but also the conceptual work of reflecting on their own assumptions and standards. We do find evidence for weak forms of capture and argue for the need to extend capture to involve multiple actors. We reflect on these results for theory development and regulatory practice.
MULTIFILE
Discussies over de ‘Smart City’ draaien vaak om technologieën die destad efficiënter moeten maken. Naast deze ‘control-room’-visie staantwee minder bekende benaderingen: ‘Smart Citizens’ zet technologiein om burgers meer zeggenschap te geven, terwijl de ‘Creative City’ destad beziet als ‘living lab’. Alle drie deze versies van de smart city biedenkansen om het werken aan de stad op nieuwe manieren vorm te geven,maar roepen ook vragen op.
Participatory energy planning at the local level engages citizens, builds legitimacy and trust, and increases successful implementation of renewable energies. In the context of heat planning, technology choices highly vary depending on the local context and social conditions and including social input therefore benefits the planning process. This research adds to the current literature, which lacks concrete examples and verified approaches that clarify what the guiding principles of participatory energy planning are and how the opportunities and challenges can be dealt with. This paper elaborates on these opportunities and challenges and proposes a process design, using multiple tools (a survey, an Information-choice Questionnaire, and workshops) to collect the social input that is necessary to make technology choices in a participatory manner. The process design is applied and tested in a case study of a Dutch neighbourhood and lessons learned are drafted as a basis for further research.
Due to societal developments, like the introduction of the ‘civil society’, policy stimulating longer living at home and the separation of housing and care, the housing situation of older citizens is a relevant and pressing issue for housing-, governance- and care organizations. The current situation of living with care already benefits from technological advancement. The wide application of technology especially in care homes brings the emergence of a new source of information that becomes invaluable in order to understand how the smart urban environment affects the health of older people. The goal of this proposal is to develop an approach for designing smart neighborhoods, in order to assist and engage older adults living there. This approach will be applied to a neighborhood in Aalst-Waalre which will be developed into a living lab. The research will involve: (1) Insight into social-spatial factors underlying a smart neighborhood; (2) Identifying governance and organizational context; (3) Identifying needs and preferences of the (future) inhabitant; (4) Matching needs & preferences to potential socio-techno-spatial solutions. A mixed methods approach fusing quantitative and qualitative methods towards understanding the impacts of smart environment will be investigated. After 12 months, employing several concepts of urban computing, such as pattern recognition and predictive modelling , using the focus groups from the different organizations as well as primary end-users, and exploring how physiological data can be embedded in data-driven strategies for the enhancement of active ageing in this neighborhood will result in design solutions and strategies for a more care-friendly neighborhood.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
This PD project aims to gather new knowledge through artistic and participatory design research within neighbourhoods for possible ways of addressing and understanding the avoidance and numbness caused by feelings of vulnerability, discomfort and pain associated with eco-anxiety and chronic fear of environmental doom. The project will include artistic production and suitable forms of fieldwork. The objectives of the PD are to find answers to the practice problem of society which call for art that sensitises, makes aware and helps initiate behavioural change around the consequences of climate change. Rather than visualize future sea levels directly, it will seek to engage with climate change in a metaphorical and poetic way. Neither a doom nor an overly techno-optimistic scenario seem useful to understand the complexity of flood risk management or the dangers of flooding. By challenging both perspectives with artistic means, this research hopes to counter eco-anxiety and create a sense of open thought and susceptibility to new ideas, feelings and chains of thought. Animation and humour, are possible ingredients. The objective is to find and create multiple Dutch water stories, not just one. To achieve this, it is necessary to develop new methods for selecting and repurposing existing impactful stories and strong images. Citizens and students will be included to do so via fieldwork. In addition, archival materials will be used. Archives serve as a repository for memory recollection and reuse, selecting material from the audiovisual archive of the Institute of Sound & Vision will be a crucial part of the creative work which will include two films and accompanying music.
