Communities are the foundation of liveable neighbourhoods. On November 26, residents, experts and housing corporations came together in Pakhuis de Zwijger (Amsterdam) to discuss how strong neighbourhood communities are formed.
The program included seminars by Tine De Moor and Teun Gautier. Four initiators of citizen collectives discussed their role as an ‘active resident’ within their local community, their current challenges are how they can be better supported by housing corporations.
On November 14, The Flemish Association of Village Interests (Vlaamse Vereniging Dorpsbelangen) organized an online meeting and invited professor Tine De Moor to give a seminar on current types of citizen participation. First, she discussed four social trends in the relationship between citizens and the government. Then, she shared an overview of instruments for citizen involvement and zoomed in on citizen collectives as a ‘new’ form of citizen involvement, particularly in villages.
Dr. Federico Savini, Associate Professor of Environmental Planning, Institutions and Politics at the University of Amsterdam, gave an enlightening presentation as part of our SEICA Open Seminar Series.
During his presentation ‘Strategic planning for degrowth: what, who, how’ he first unpacked the so called ‘strategic thought’ in degrowth research. This is a research field of degrowth that is particularly concerned with the tactics and processes that bring about degrowth as a wider socio-ecological transition. What are the key challenges? Second, he argued why and how strategic spatial planning can be an important tool in this transition. Dr. Savini illustrated his arguments with the example of the so called ‘doughnut vision’ in Amsterdam. His presentation sparked an inspired conversation between attendees. Is it realistic to believe that ideological change resulting in systems of degrowth can happen?
You can find the presented paper here. The paper incited a response from dr. Yvonne Rydin, which can be found here. Dr. Savini then replied with an article that is available here.
Affiliate researcher José-Miguel Lana Berasain, Professor of Economic History and Institutions in Public University of Navarre, has published a paper where he dives into the transformations of common lands in Spain during the 19th century.
‘Between a rock and a hard place: the privatization or preservation of the commons in Spain in the 19th century’ was published in the Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie. The study reveals the complexity of the processes of change in property rights and the need to approach property rights as a bundle of rights and powers that could be vested in different players.
Continue readingIn an open-access study, Thomas Bauwens (Rotterdam School of Management), Robert Wade (Eindhoven University of Technology) and Matthew Burke (University of Vermont) argue that while renewable energy sources are crucial, more systemic changes are needed.
“Energy commons offer a more democratic and sustainable pathway, moving beyond market and state-led models.”
The paper, published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science, takes as a starting point the failure of market-driven approaches to tackle the climate crisis at the necessary scale and speed.
Continue readingOn October 22, dr. Amineh Ghorbani, presented as part of our SEICA Open Seminar Talks. Amineh Ghorbani is an Associate professor of Institutional Modelling and Analysis at the System’s Engineering group. She is also an affiliated researcher of our research group, of the Institutional Grammar Research Initiative, and the Ostrom Workshop.
A research article by Damion Bunders and Tine De Moor from the Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus University) has been published in the Journal of Management and Inquiry. The article is titled: ‘Paradoxical Tensions as a Double-Edged Sword: Analysing the Development of Platform Cooperatives in the European Gig Economy‘.
Continue reading
A study published in the Journal of Economic Geography suggests that fostering strong local networks could be a strategic focus for municipalities looking to encourage the emergence of renewable energy cooperatives.
Thomas Bauwens, Stefan Geskus, Matthijs Punt, Rense Corten and Koen Frenken published their study, titled ‘Does social capital foster renewable energy cooperatives?’ They measured social capital from social media data within and across municipalities, overcoming the usual limitations of using proxies. They also used data on Dutch energy cooperatives from the Lokale Energie Monitor by HIER .
Continue reading
Professor Tine De Moor (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University) has obtained additional funding from the NWO Impact Explorer. This gives us the opportunity to take a big step in building the memory of citizen collectives.
Many network organizations lack the resources (time, manpower, finances) to manage data effectively, which hinders collaboration with scientists. That’s unfortunate, because research can lead to valuable insights that allow us to better understand this movement. It can help civil servants to formulate more targeted policies and citizen collectives to improve their working methods and use resources more efficiently.
Through knowledge exchange platform CollectieveKracht, we will deploy a knowledge broker who will identify relevant information and develop data structures to support citizen collectives in data collection and management. In this way, the knowledge broker strengthens the position of citizen collectives and lays a solid foundation for future research and policy.
On September 24, dr. Nicolas Jager opened the new season of our SEICA Open Seminar Talks. Dr. Jager is Assistant Professor for the governance of sustainability transformations with the Public Administration and Policy group at Wageningen University & Research. He gave a presentation titled ‘Does public participation improve environmental governance and foster collective action? What works, when, and how?’
He discussed a meta-analysis of 305 case studies, which provides insights into how ‘more’ participatory decision-making processes compare against ‘less’ participatory ones in fostering – or hindering – strong environmental governance outputs. The presentation was based on the study “Does stakeholder participation improve environmental governance? Evidence from a meta-analysis of 305 case studies”. Find it here.
