This lessons learned report gives an overview of the output and results of the first phase of the REDUCES project. The introduction states the relevance of combining a policy approach with business model analysis, and defines the objectives. Next, an overview is given of circular economy good business practices in the regions involved. Examining these business practices helped to define the regional needs for circular economy policy. This business approach proved to be a solid base for developing regional circular economy action plans, the last chapter of this report.
Regional development has often been described in economic terms, using economic indicators such as growth in GDP or demographic indicators such as net migration or employment. Some researchers argued that regional development should be understood broader, by including for example social indicators and living environment indicators . Recently, researchers have shown that policies directed towards regional development have broadened as well , but are also still evaluated within specific narratives or frameworks that often constitute the goals of the policy, for example the Keynesian framework favours increasing demand and favours the evaluation of policies aimed at exactly this. This self-constituting practice of an amalgam of related policies has also been referred to by Hall as a policy paradigm. Because policies are often evaluated within these policy paradigms it becomes difficult to decontextualise them, disentangle them and compare policies with each other.In this paper we propose to use a different, more quantitative and comparative method. By applying the above mentioned work from Andy Pike on numerous data sources from EUROSTAT and OECD, researchers from the PREMIUM_EU project developed a new framework that is measuring Regional Development (dubbed “R”) using economic, social and living environment indicators.MethodBy regarding this “R” (and individual indicators) as an outcome of public policies on the local, regional, national and international level and by analysing regional development policies on different levels from 2010 and onwards we believe it is possible to understand the impact of these policies in a more evidenced based sense, regardless of the above mentioned different types of narratives or frameworks.We started our research with an analysis from the OECD on the different types of regional development policies and the relations between different levels of government within countries. Based on this and literature research, we developed a framework with relevant topics for regional development policies and different levels of government.Based on the work of Moritz Schütz presented during the ERSA 2024 conference, we developed and employed a webcrawler to automatically download and summarise policies from municipalities, regional and national authorities and analyse the results of this exercise.Findings/resultsThe webcrawling and -mining exercise in combination with the new set of indicators will offer a much broader and more comprehensive view of the use and necessity of regional development policies. The findings will be discussed in dedicated policy labs with policymakers and researchers from the respective regions.Discussion/conclusionsBoth the new set of indicators and the analysis of the policies are not only innovative, but will also be viewed as speculative. Although we believe that a direct causal relationship between policies and the regional development will be hard to uncover, we do believe that this research will move the field of policy analysis forward, because it is more focused on evidence-based indicators and is based on larger sets of policies.
In this policy evaluation report, the results of the first 2 years of the Interreg funded ABCitiEs project are presented. In total 16 entrepreneurship collectives have been studied in 5 partner regions, i.e. Athens, Vilnius, Varazdin-Cakovec, Manchester and Amsterdam. The report contains an analysis of the cases and gives an overview of the most important opportunities and challenges faced by these cases. On the basis of these result, 4 policy directions have been selected in which improvement are considered most successful, i.e. access to funding, intermediaries, monitoring and experimental learning environments. Also, the report presents the action plans that have been formulated on the basis of these policy directions for the cities involved in this project. In the last 2 years of the project, project partners will implement these action plans in their respective cities.
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Dit project omvat een verkennend onderzoek dat beoogt de technische route, de scope en de randvoorwaarden van de energietransitie op vakantieparken en campings in beeld te brengen. De sector voor vakantieparken en campings zal, net als alle andere sectoren, binnen dertig jaar nul-emissies van broeikasgassen moeten bereiken. De gemeente Goeree-Overflakkee en de Provincie Zuid-Holland zijn voornemens om een project op te zetten om de voor Goeree-Overflakkee belangrijke sector te helpen de energietransitie te maken. De gemeente en provincie willen graag antwoord op de vraag welke kennis en welke partijen nodig zijn om de duurzaamheidsdoelstelling zodanig in een beleidsproces te gieten dat de belangen van de vele stakeholders in deze sector samenkomen op een wijze dat de doelstelling gehaald wordt.This project entails an exploratory study that aims to map the technical route, scope and preconditions of the energy transition at holiday parks and campsites. The holiday park and camping sector, like all other sectors, will have to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions within thirty years. The municipality of Goeree-Overflakkee and the Province of South Holland intend to set up a project to help this important sector on Goeree-Overflakkee to make the energy transition. The municipality and province would like an answer to the question of what knowledge and which parties are needed to put the sustainability objective into a policy process in such a way that the interests of the many stakeholders in this sector come together in a way that the objective is achieved.
Smart city technologies, including artificial intelligence and computer vision, promise to bring a higher quality of life and more efficiently managed cities. However, developers, designers, and professionals working in urban management have started to realize that implementing these technologies poses numerous ethical challenges. Policy papers now call for human and public values in tech development, ethics guidelines for trustworthy A.I., and cities for digital rights. In a democratic society, these technologies should be understandable for citizens (transparency) and open for scrutiny and critique (accountability). When implementing such public values in smart city technologies, professionals face numerous knowledge gaps. Public administrators find it difficult to translate abstract values like transparency into concrete specifications to design new services. In the private sector, developers and designers still lack a ‘design vocabulary’ and exemplary projects that can inspire them to respond to transparency and accountability demands. Finally, both the public and private sectors see a need to include the public in the development of smart city technologies but haven’t found the right methods. This proposal aims to help these professionals to develop an integrated, value-based and multi-stakeholder design approach for the ethical implementation of smart city technologies. It does so by setting up a research-through-design trajectory to develop a prototype for an ethical ‘scan car’, as a concrete and urgent example for the deployment of computer vision and algorithmic governance in public space. Three (practical) knowledge gaps will be addressed. With civil servants at municipalities, we will create methods enabling them to translate public values such as transparency into concrete specifications and evaluation criteria. With designers, we will explore methods and patterns to answer these value-based requirements. Finally, we will further develop methods to engage civil society in this processes.
Analysis of the economic, social-societal and environmental impacts of river cruise tourism in West-Friesland, for the municipalities of Hoorn, Enkhuizen and Medemblik. BUas responsible for the environmental impact analysis.Societal IssueRiver cruise tourism is generally a growing industry in the Netherlands, where regular arrivals of ships with 150 to 200 passengers bring economic benefits but also possible challenges related to crowding, congestion and environmental impacts, amongst others.Benefit to societyThe research informs local policymakers on the current situation and some expected developments of river cruise tourism, to be able to make more informed policy decisions about its future development in West Friesland.Partners in this project:Ginder (Projectlead)Vrolijks Blue ProgressBuas Centre for Sustainability, Tourism and Transport
