Burgerkennis als hulpbron voor stedelijke ontwikkeling

Om een duurzame samenleving te waarborgen hebben beleidsmakers de participatie van burgers hard nodig – niet om enkel in te stemmen met voorgekookte oplossingen, maar ook om alternatieve wegen te exploreren. Zoals bij de omstreden afvalwaterinjecties in Noordoost-Twente

Fight against fracking in rural Netherlands: from community meetings to decision-making

In late 2014, in our home region of Twente, the Netherlands, the local newspaper reported that the Dutch National Oil Company (NAM) was meeting with local citizens to give them information about the injection of waste water from oil drilling operations (an extraction technique similar to fracking) in the area. The report came some three years after the pumping had started. The story set off alarm bells. Why would a company organize meetings to tell residents about something that had been happening legally for more than three years?\ud \ud More than a year of organizing and meetings followed, during which time the NAM had to suspend pumping and the Netherlands declared a ten-year moratorium on fracking in response to widespread opposition. This is a story of how local residents were able to unmask the manipulation masquerading as citizen participation, gather information and develop knowledge about fracking, and insist on a more democratic approach based on open discussion and full disclosure by the authorities and NAM

Sociaal ondernemerschap in Twente

In een tijdperk van krimp dien je alles uit je burgers halen om de leefbaarheid van kwetsbare regio’s op peil te houden. Er is toenemende belangstelling onder beleidsmakers voor het fenomeen wat steeds vaker ‘sociaal ondernemerschap’ wordt genoemd. Met sociaal ondernemerschap verkennen burgers zelf mogelijke problemen van leegstand en leegloop in het landelijk gebied om vervolgens zelf met goede oplossingen hiervoor te komen. Sociale ondernemers mobiliseren de bestaande passieve vermogens in die gemeenschappen om nieuwe ideeën en maatschappelijke voorzieningen te realiseren die voldoen aan de wensen en verlangens van de burgers zelf

Social Entrepreneurship and Shrinking Regions paper thoughts: “What motivates social entrepreneurs to be active in promoting sustainable social services in shrinking rural regions? A case study of Greater Twente.

There is an increasing realisation that advanced economies are suffering from a new wave of rural depopulation as a consequence of a ‘perfect storm’ of rural outmigration and falling birth-rates. The issue of managed decline (i.e. rural demolition) has actively been proposed as the only inevitable solution to this issue of rural decline, but experience shows is that it is not a solution to the question of where and how to live for the populations that inhabit these condemned places. In this paper we are concerned with whether expressions of rural populations can contest policy-makers’ visions for these shrinking rural regions and address the central policy pessimism. In particular, we are concerned with attempts by residents themselves in these rural areas to address the issue of loss of vital services through their own interventions. In this paper, we focus on the process of “social entrepreneurship” as a means by which local communities can attempt to address the vicious circle of rural depopulation. We focus on the issue how can we characterise rural social entrepreneurs’ different kinds of motivations as a starting point to develop policy approaches that seek to support rural communities. Drawing on a case study of the Twente region, we identify nine motivation narratives expressed by social entrepreneurs. These are primarily concerned with doing useful and rewarding things, and only secondarily with embodying various kinds of entrepreneurial identity. We conclude with a typology of rural social entrepreneur motivations and its potential applications in improving rural development policy

Knowledge, urban policy making and citizen participation: a democratic challenge

This chapter explores the functioning of ‘ordinary’ citizen knowledge in decision-making processes of urban planning, policy and development processes. It aims to understand how urban governance can better utilise non-expert types of knowledge as a way to respond to pressing societal challenges in the 21st century. By presenting a controversial case study about the wastewater injections in the Dutch Twente region, located in the east of the Netherlands, the chapter highlights the importance of combining diverse types of (expert and non-expert) knowledge and expertise to achieve a more holistic form of ‘smart’ urban governance in the future