In the Netherlands, an individual’s problem is not usually considered to be the community’s problem. If you are a nuisance, you are sent out of the class. If a child is awkward in its dealings with others, it is sent for training in social skills. And if youths hang around the street and people feel intimidated, the youths are removed. Police officers move them on. Civic leaders introduce bans on assembly. In other countries, too, people are usually dispersed to prevent escalation.
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Abstract. In recent years circular economy has become more important for the development of many places including cities. Traditionally, urban development policies have mainly been aiming to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of neighbourhoods. However, technical and ecologic aspects have their effects too and need to go hand in hand. This paper is based on an urban area experiment in the Dutch city of Utrecht. In order to assess urban area developments, typically rather straight-forward quantitative indicators have been used. However, it has proved more complicated to assess multifaceted developments of the area studied in this paper. With the City Model Canvas a multi-layered model is being used to better assess the impact of the urban development being studied. Key findings include that the project studied resulted in more space for companies from the creative industry and the settlement of local ‘circular’ entrepreneurs and start-ups, although it remains unclear to what extent these benefit from each other’s presence. The increase in business activity resulted in more jobs, but it is again unclear whether this led to more social inclusion. From an environmental point of view the project activities resulted in less raw materials being used, although activities and public events bring nuisance to the surrounding neighbourhoods.
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Indecent exposure is often regarded as a nuisance offense and detailed studies into this topic are relatively rare. However, there is consensus that relatively high recidivism rates and risk of escalation to more severe offenses can be of serious concern among these perpetrators. This cohort study aims to increase our general knowledge on the basic characteristics of these offenses and includes all registered police cases of indecent exposure in the Netherlands between 2012 and 2020, including 6741 incidents, involving 4663 suspects and 3808 registered victims. This first study of a large cohort over a long period of time describes the basic characteristics of these incidents, the perpetrators and their victims, and visualizes the results to explore trends over time. Results show that a modal indecent exposure incident is perpetrated by a 25-year-old male, on foot, on a public road, on a Wednesday afternoon in July, masturbating and directing his genitals intentionally toward a 13-year-old girl. The age distribution of victims shows remarkable similarity to victims of sexual assault. Compared to the first year of the period studied, the number of annually reported incidents gradually declined to half in the last year of the study. Findings are discussed in light of the most prominent theories on exhibitionism. Issues and suggestions relevant to apprehension and treatment of perpetrators are identified and discussed.
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The domestic use of natural gas for heating is the prevalent option in the Netherlands. However, heat pumps will be mandatory in most Dutch households by 2026. Therefore, insights are needed in how citizens perceive this technology, by taking into account various societal, technological, economic, environmental, and political aspects. Our research offers a systematic investigation of the multiple viewpoints of heat pump users and their neighbors in Groningen, northern Netherlands. Using Q-methodology, we identified three distinct but interrelated and shared viewpoints: the realistic users, the hesitant neighbors and the enthusiastic advocates. All three shared viewpoints incorporate social influence and cognitive considerations, with the positive environmental impacts of heat pumps being highlighted in unison. Cognitive considerations relate mainly to technical and economic concerns. Social influence considerations often hint at the necessity of making prior agreements with the neighbors. We argue that the findings of this study can support policymakers toward the development of an integrated heat transition strategy.
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A B S T R A C T Purpose: To determine cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of environmental factors with frailty and disability. Methods: This study was conducted in a sample of Dutch citizens. At baseline the sample consisted of 429 subjects (aged ≥ 65 years); a subset of this sample participated again two and half years later (N=355). The participants completed a web-based questionnaire, “the Senioren Barometer”, comprising seven scales for assessing environmental factors, and the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI) and the Groningen Activity Restriction Scale (GARS), for assessing frailty and disability, respectively. Environmental factors of interest were: nuisance; housing; facilities; residents; neighborhood; stench/noise; and traffic. Results: Sequential regression analyses demonstrated that all environmental factors together explained a significant part of the variance of physical and social frailty and disability in performing activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), measured at Time 1 (T1) and Time 2 (T2). These analyses also showed that four of the environmental factors were associated with at least one of the outcome measures: housing, nuisance, residents, and neighborhood. Housing was the only environmental factor associated with three different outcome measures (social frailty, ADL disability, IADL disability), assessed at T1 and T2. Conclusion: The findings offer health-care and welfare professionals and also policymakers starting points for interventions. These interventions should focus, in particular, on housing, nuisance, residents, and neighborhood, because their impact on frailty and/or disability was the largest.
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A new urban consolidation centre, called Binnenstadservice.nl ('Inner city service'), started business in April 2008 in the Dutch city of Nijmegen. The consolidation centre in Nijmegen differs from initiatives in the past, distinguishing itself from other UCC initiatives by its focus on receivers rather than on carriers. After one year already 98 stores joined Binnenstadservice.nl and this number is still growing. Due to Binnenstadservice.nl, fewer trucks enter the city centre and fewer kilometres are driven. In this paper we provide insights into the local effects of the Binnenstadservice pilot after one year, such as air quality, inconvenience for residents and noise nuisance. The effects on local air quality and noise nuisance are limited, due to the amount of passenger and bus traffic remaining. Plans exist to start Binnenstadservice.nl franchises in other Dutch cities, which could result in making Binnenstadservice.nl a more serious partner for carriers to handle the transport of last mile distribution in cities.
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Urban logistics is vital to keep the urban fabric running, but affects liveability while operators also have to deal with shrinking space in which they have to conduct operations. Despite this, there is primarily a lot of focus on decarbonising logistics as well as on logistics concepts to improve the efficiency of urban logistics going into urban areas. In this study we address the spatial footprint of logistics and possibilities to reduce this on a neighbuorhood level. We develop a typology with different archetype neighbourhoods in which we estimate the logistics footprint per area with a decomposition in different logistics segments and number of vehicles towards the year 2035. Based upon that we propose interventions for stakeholders to jointly reduce the negative impact. This study sheds more light on the importance of area.
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The demographics of the homeless population in many countries are currently shifting, and this cannot be explained by the different welfare systems to be found in these countries. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that the homelessness policies of some countries are converging, and we observe a combination of decentralisation, housing first, and a taylor-made, individualised approach. However, what is interesting is the question as to what extent these policies are based on a punitive dimension or on a justice dimension.
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There is a lot of attention for the reduction of city logistics' emissions. But also if city logistics' vehicles are zero emission, the vehicles remain present in urban areas. Zero emission vehicles also occupy valuable urban space during unloading on the road and on sidewalks. Despite the spatial impact of city logistics, it is rarely considered in spatial planning. Based on four case studies, we explore possibilities to actively integrate city logistics in spatial planning policies and practices in order to reduce nuisance, but also to enhance efficiency of deliveries. In the end, spatial planning determines the physical urban conditions in which city logistics operations are taking place for many years. From the results we distil a research agenda to bridge the gap between city logistics as a traffic issue and its integration in spatial planning policies.
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