The role of City Climate Networks in Promoting Citizen Participation in Municipalities: A Critical Multi-Case Analysis

Background<br/>At the COP21, cities were recognised as key actors in combatting climate change. In supporting cities, climate city networks such as transnational climate networks (TCNs) and national climate networks (NCNs) have emerged to enable cities in building capacities and formulating climate policy whilst also encouraging citizen...

Experts and expertise in practices of citizen engagement in climate policy: a comparative analysis of two contrasting cases

The need for engaging citizens in climate policymaking is increasingly recognised. Despite indications that the form of expert involvement can strongly influence participatory processes, this remains scarcely researched. We analysed two unique and contrasting cases of citizen engagement in national climate mitigation policy: (1) the Irish...

The Future of Citizen Participation in Public Decision-Making in the Netherlands

This master’s thesis explores the future of citizen participation in public decision-making in the Netherlands. Citizen participation is regarded as an important aspect of the Dutch democracy since it is used to gain insights into what the citizens consider important. Currently, there is scarce scientific literature on the future of citizen...

Examining Citizen Preferences for Participation in the Energy Transition: Aligning Central and Decentral Participation Processes in The Netherlands

To mitigate climate change by transforming the energy system citizen involvement is crucial. Citizen involvement can help achieve these goals as well as accelerate the transition, by harnessing local knowledge for the improvement of plans, creating a support base and the opportunity for citizens to come up with their own initiatives. Therefore...

Web of attributes: analysing residents’ appreciation of a Dutch neighbourhood from a new heritage perspective

In the last century, the concept of what can be heritage has expanded in definition, opening to everyday architecture and living environments. More recently, the group of stakeholders to be involved in heritage assessment and management has slowly grown, with authorities acknowledging that heritage significance lies in the representation and...

User-Valued Innovations for Social Housing Upgrading through Trans-Atlantic Living Labs - uVITAL

Scaling citizen participation through local energy initiatives: Insights in the roles and contribution of the local energy initiatives in The Hague and a strategy and action repertoire for the municipality of The Hague

Within the Energy Transition, citizen involvement is essential. In the end, we have to change together to succeed within the Energy Transition. Because of the local character of the Energy Transition and a responsibility shift, the municipalities have got the challenging task to increase citizen involvement. Local energy initiatives can be a...

Between consultation and collaboration: Self-reported objectives for 25 web-based geoparticipation projects in urban planning

Web-based participatory mapping technologies are being increasingly harnessed by local governments to crowdsource local knowledge and engage the public in urban planning policies as a means of increasing the transparency and legitimacy of planning processes and decisions. We refer to these technologies as “geoparticipation”. Current...

Proof of the Pudding: Applying the City-Zen Methodology to Other European Cities.

Back in 2012, a group of enthusiasts submitted a project proposal to the EU. Many talks, partner proposals, and city explorations later, City-zen was granted EU-funding “to develop and demonstrate energy efficient cities and to build a methodology and tools for cities, industries and citizens to reach the 20-20-20 targets”. The program, rooted...

Join the Park!: Exploring Opportunities to Lower the Participation Divide in Park Communities

The current work explores the participation divide that is oftentimes at play within local citizen communities. The studied case illustrates a common situation where the majority of local citizens does not participate in public space improvement and maintenance activities organised by local community activists. The presented research involved...

Trust, awareness, and independence: Insights from a socio-psychological factor analysis of citizen knowledge and participation in community energy systems

In order to decarbonize the energy sector, there is a widespread consensus that the role of end-users in the energy system should change from passive consumption to active prosumption and engagement. This is of particular importance as an increasing number of technologies and business models are focusing on the end-users. These developments...

Towards generalized process patterns for detecting corruption within the government using open data

Governments are seeking for new ways to fight corruption within their own administration. The opening of data has the potential to involve citizens in detecting corruption by providing them the ability to view and analyze data about what is happening within the government. However, how open data can be used to detect corruption is not clear....