This thesis explores how political parties influence mobility policy at the municipal level in the Netherlands. While existing literature has primarily focused on national politics, this study investigates how party ideology, political strategies and external factors interact in the local policy-making process. Drawing on partisan theory from a party family approach and the Multiple Streams Framework, the research aims at understanding how mobility challenges are defined, framed, prioritized, responded to and translated into policy. A qualitative comparative case study design was adopted in this study and focused on the municipalities of Leiden and Zoetermeer. These municipalities differ in their political composition and mobility policy approaches. The primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews with local council members, aldermen and civil servants, supported by a review of policy documents and municipal plans. Findings indicate that there is a relationship between the political party composition of a coalition and the direction of mobility policy that is pursued. However, this relationship is influenced by a broader political context. By demonstrating the interplay between party preferences, political strategies and structures and local institutional contexts, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of urban mobility policymaking and the role that local politics play in shaping this.

This research examines to what extent policy arrangements of the local energy transition in two urban vulnerable neighbourhoods in the Netherlands are just. Even though national climate ambitions have been established, implementation of measures largely depends on municipalities and local actors. Using the Policy Arrangement Approach, this study analyses discourses, actors, rules of the game, and resources in two case studies: Venserpolder (Amsterdam) and BospolderTussendijken (Rotterdam). The policy arrangements in both neighbourhoods were analysed through the lens of distributional, procedural, and recognition justice to assess the justness of the local energy transitions. The findings show that both municipalities follow a top-down approach but differ in their governance practices. In Venserpolder, limited resident engagement, dependence on large-scale institutional actors, and communication that is mainly focussed on homeowners’ associations (VvEs) constrain just and successful outcomes of the local energy transition. In Bospolder-Tussendijken, the energy transition is integrated with a broader resilience agenda and is grounded in an Asset-Based Community Development discourse which fosters stronger procedural and recognition justice. Nevertheless, challenges remain for the inclusion of vulnerable groups. Overall, this study highlights the need for more inclusive governance practices and the combination of strong institutional coordination with community participation, just resource distribution, and recognition of diverse social contexts in order for national climate ambitions to be achieved in a just way.

Walking is important for elderly people as it allows for community interaction, access to resources, and helps maintain mobility and good health. Previous research found that barriers in public space and individual factors, such as reduced mobility, influence safety perceptions of elderly when walking and can eventually affect their willingness of walking. While the municipality of Amsterdam monitors the safety perception of residents, few insights are provided on how elderly perceive their safety while walking and how different determinants are of influence. This research explores individual safety perceptions of elderly and their influence on walking by combining a policy document analysis, semi-structured interviews and Q-methodology. The interviews and Q-methodology were conducted with 14 elderly residents living in three city districts in Amsterdam. Two shared perspectives on safety perception were found, with one emphasizing the importance of respectful behavior from traffic users and the other highlighting good sidewalks that are not slippery. Next to this, sidewalk barriers, traffic speed, and public lighting were important aspects. One interesting finding was the strong negative influence of the behavior of cyclists and micromobility users on the safety perceptions of participants. The policy analysis showed different municipal approaches in relation to walking and revealed that limited space for redesign, limited maintenance budgets and a lack of clear policy on micromobility use currently form the greatest barriers to enhancing safe walking among elderly. Findings of this study help to understand the safety perceptions of elderly residents in more detail and can help inform future municipal policy aimed at encouraging walking among this group.

There is growing concern that conventional knowledge production insufficiently addresses the complexity of sustainability challenges. Participatory research collaborations between academic actors and non-academic actors, that is, transdisciplinary co-production, are increasingly used to overcome the limits of dominant scientific methods and enhance societal impact. This thesis aims to better understand how power is enacted and experienced in an international transdisciplinary co-production project on food system transformation: FOSTER. It explores power dynamics across context, actor roles and relations, ideas of valid knowledge, collaboration experiences, and project outcomes. Data was collected through participatory observations at the FOSTER summer school and fifteen semi-structured interviews with consortium members in May and June 2025. The findings show that power relations are present, but are layered, nuanced, and varied, and constructed from assumptions, opinions, and institutional structures in FOSTER and its context. Within the project boundaries, consortium members have different degrees of agency to achieve goals, shaped by project requirements and budget allocation set largely by the funding body. Thus, institutional structures can influence which power dynamics are present and how they are expressed. Despite some positive experiences in internal collaborations, the wider project collaboration was marked by uneven academic-practitioner relations. In FOSTER, these power dynamics often left practitioners feeling like research objects rather than knowledge co-producers. Such relations were sustained through dominant ideas about what valid knowledge is and how research should be performed. Therefore, consortium members seem to accept roles that reinforce power differentials. This contributed to group dynamics in which collective action and learning were limited. Ultimately, people perceive the project outcomes as less co-produced and transformative than intended. The findings suggest that changing power relations requires reflexive skills, enabling people to reflect on positions and paradigms influencing collaborations. Future TD collaborations and participatory action research should provide time, space, and flexibility to cultivate such reflexivity, supporting more equitable, transformative TD co-production.

Urban blue space is increasingly used to refer to an urban waterbody and its waterfront, implying that the waterfront should be a shared public space. Unsurprisingly, increasing competition over the benefits of urban blue space has resulted in issues of justice. While spatial justice is rapidly becoming one of the main planning goals in the global North, in the global South, where central states are often pursuing neoliberal agendas to keep up with developed countries, empirical studies remain few. This thesis evaluates urban blue space regeneration from a spatial justice perspective in Istanbul, a typical example of such a context. An evaluative spatial justice framework is applied to the policy plans for ‘Haliç Marina and Complex Project’, a recent regeneration initiative and hot discussion topic in local and national politics. Using interviews, site observations, and two local Masterplans, a qualitative content analysis (QCA) shows that the plan prioritizes commercial development before spatial justice. The plan seems to be an iteration of developmentalist politics of the national government, and so Istanbul’s blue space is subject to the will of a powerful, entrepreneurial government. While this poses many challenges to spatial justice, a strong resistance movement and a slowly changing political climate stem hopeful. Future studies should extent the empirical database to more different contexts, to identify how the transition from profit-based regeneration towards spatial justice can be achieved.

It is necessary to reduce meat consumption due to its impact on the climate. Various organisations, including the municipality of Amsterdam, are already taking steps to address this issue. However, these efforts often face resistance from the public. This emotional reaction hinders the establishment from implementing meat curtailment policies (MCPs). Therefore, it is essential to investigate the underlying reasons for these emotional reactions and whether these insights can be used to design meat curtailment interventions that cause less emotional responses. Consequently, this research addresses the following question: "What underlies the emotional reaction to reducing the meat supply in company restaurants, and how can these underlying reasons be used to design policies to reduce meat consumption at company restaurants?"

This study employed two research methods: emotion networking and brainstorming. The first part of the study employed emotion networking to explore the reasons behind the emotional reaction. It revealed that reducing meat consumption, whether through meat reduction policies or otherwise, evokes feelings of threats to freedom of choice, coercion, and exclusion. People perceive meat as essential and consume it consciously. These positive feelings about meat reinforce the negative feelings about reducing meat consumption. The underlying reasons for the emotional reactions seem strongly interconnected, with individuals often experiencing multiple underlying reasons.

The second part of the study consisted of a brainstorming session, focused on designing interventions based on the outcomes of the first part of the study. However, the ambiguity and interconnectedness of these emotions and underlying reasons prevented valuable interventions from being designed. This raises a crucial question: what are effective interventions?
The findings of this study contribute to the transition away from meat consumption as it showed that threats to the need to feel socially or culturally included cause resistance against reducing meat consumption, and meat offering at company’s restaurants or MCPs. Moreover, it suggests that there is a negative perception that eating vegetarian means eating meat substitutes, which causes resistance. Also, the lens of transition pain has proven insightful to research resistance against MCPs. Finally, this study suggests that designing effective interventions that do not cause resistance is complex and perhaps impossible. Consequently, it seems valuable to focus on designing interventions that effectively reduce meat consumption. Therefore, the question should be addressed: What is an effective intervention?

This thesis explores the potential for reducing car-use in development area Waterlandkwartier in Purmerend, with a particular focus on soft measures. Using the stage model of self-regulated behavioral change (SSBC) (Bamberg, 2013b) as a framework, this thesis identifies internal factors influencing residents' mobility choices and assesses how soft measures can be effectively implemented to encourage a shift away from car centricity. Additionally, Michie et al.’s (2011) behavioral change wheel was added to the framework to comprehend the external factors that could also influence behavior. A survey conducted among local residents revealed specific areas of focus, including social norms, personal norms, and perceived behavioral control. A comparison with other municipalities and an analysis of existing literature highlighted that while Purmerend's planned hard measures are common, they need to be complemented by soft measures to reduce resistance and encourage voluntary behavioral change. It is recommended that the municipality of Purmerend implements soft measures to complement existing hard measures from their mobility program of requirements (2022a). The soft measures include social norms marketing to normalize reduced car-use by spreading messages that highlight desirable behavior, and antecedent strategies to raise awareness about the negative impacts of car-use on public space, encouraging shifts in personal norms. Residents should be encouraged to set specific, achievable goals for reducing car-use. For shared mobility specifically, mastery and vicarious experiences should be provided through events and media, this can increase perceived feasibility and perceived behavioral control. These findings contribute to the broader conversation on sustainable urban mobility and offer valuable insights for other cities aiming to implement measures to reduce car use.

Feelings of unsafety limits a person’s accessibility and usage of public spaces, especially for women as they experience higher levels of fear compared to men. Hence, gender differences in safety perceptions in public spaces have been widely studied among scholars. However, in such research women, and men, are often seen as a homogenous group, whilst there may be significant differences in in safety perceptions among them. Hence, this research aims to explore the differences in individual safety perception among women in public spaces of Holendrecht, in the south-eastern part of Amsterdam, using qualitative research methods like interviewing and mental mapping. Two identities explicitly come forward, women with a large social network, who are older, live longer in the neighbourhood and have a Surinam or Ghanese ethnicity, tend to report lower levels of feelings unsafe. And those with a small social network in the neighbourhood, who are younger, live there for a shorter period and have a Dutch ethnicity, are more in need of additional factors to enhance their feelings of safety. Such factors are familiarity and physical factors influencing visibility. These results indicate the importance of taking an intersectional approach, to see how social categorization intervene with different perceptions of safety. This way, decisions on maintenance and improving public spaces can be better informed to create more equal access of public spaces.

This research aims to understand the local governance capacity of Amsterdam Oud-Noord and discover how this area, together with its stakeholders, can improve its climate resilience through transformative climate adaptation governance. This was done by first understanding the research area, its challenges and needed climate adaptation, and by identifying the present climate adaptation stakeholders. Secondly, the governance climate adaptation governance capacity was analysed, according to the redevelopment and extension of an existing framework. Transformative governance climate adaptation governance capacity was analysed through four governance capacities; Stewarding, Unlocking, Transformative and Orchestrating capacity, and related indicators. This led to the identification of governance capacity gaps, followed by recommendations for improvement.
The findings indicate that climate adaptation governance capacity is perceived as promising, but all identified indicators show that there is a need for improvement. The most pressing gaps identified are insufficient smart monitoring and insufficient stakeholder synergies. These are suggested to be improved by increasing the awareness and recognition of the value of monitoring. Next to that, accessible general methods should be developed, enabling all types of stakeholders to monitor their climate adaptation. Lastly, our results suggest that a platform should be created where stakeholders can share and coordinate their activities and possible concerns regarding climate adaptation.