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Europe has come to recognize that its regions have a major role to play in achieving its cohesion and competitiveness objectives. EU policies and Structural Fund principles are therefore increasingly geared towards enhancing regional capacities. Regions across Europe are responding, with varying results so far. The Randstad, in the Netherlands, presents itself as a ‘far from best’ example. Despite continued and serious attempts to strengthen capacities and institutions, the region still lacks effective governance. This paper explores the question why it is next to impossible to establish a framework for effective governance in the Randstad and distils some lessons for other regions in Europe.

Stedelijke regio’s spelen een belangrijke rol in het halen van de Europese cohesie- en concurrentiedoelen. Europees beleid is dan ook in toenemende mate gericht op verbetering van de regionale capaciteiten. De regio’s reageren hier met wisselend succes op. De Randstad lijkt een far from best-voorbeeld te zijn. Want ondanks aanhoudende en serieuze pogingen om haar capaciteiten en instituties te versterken, mist de Randstad als geheel tot nu toe effectieve governance. In dit hoofdstuk gaan wij in op de vraag waarom het vrijwel onmogelijk is om een systeem van effectieve governance in de gehele Randstad te ontwikkelen. Uit de bevindingen worden lessen getrokken voor andere regio’s in Europa.

In this chapter a global overview of drylands is presented. The study region and case study areas are selected using a few simple criteria. Starting with the aridity class and degree of degradation areas were classified based on the population density and on the presence of at least one large city in the area.

El objetivo del artículo es analizar el papel que juega la influencia internacional en el diseño y aplicación de políticas educativas en el Cono Sur. Específicamente pretende explorar el proceso a través del cual las ideas, recomendaciones y metas globales modelan las políticas educativas latinoamericanas. Para ello, el artículo se centra en el programa de Educación para Todos y en el Acuerdo General de Comercio de Servicios, analizando los mecanismos de influencia externa que intervienen en cada caso –imposición, difusión y estandarización –, las formas a través de las cuales se “negocian” a escala nacional dichos programas y acuerdos y los efectos de dichos procesos en las políticas educativas nacionales de tres países de la región – Argentina, Brasil y Chile.

Hoe realistisch is het ideaal van de wetenschapper die, enkel gewapend met zijnobjectieve kennis, maatschappelijke problemen ofwijdverbreide misverstanden aande kaak stelt? Niet zo realistisch blijkt uit dit nummer. Heden ten dage opererenwetenschappers in een schemergebied waarin politiek, beleid en waarheidsvindingsoms op problematische wijze in elkaar overlopen. Wetenschappers moeten hunschijnobjectiviteit laten varen, maar hun onderzoek niet tot politiek laten reduceren.

Whereas the global water community may have reached consensus on the need for water providers to operate on the basis of commercial principles, staff of water utilities are faced with the challenge of implementing these principles in their everyday work. In the everyday domain, these principles appear to directly conflict with the mandate of water operators to provide water services to all. Moreover, the socio-political, economic and bio-physical context in which these water operate may be ill-suited to implement commercialization. In pursuing commercialization these operators adapt, reinterpret, modify, deflect, alter or betray the original principles of commercialization during implementation. This research takes inspiration from the rich literature on policy implementation and policy translation, which argues that policy models need to be transformed and modified if they are to be successfully adopted or implemented. This research analyzes the alterations visible in the daily implementation of commercial models of water provisioning and, in doing so, present a better understanding of how water operators implement policy prescriptions of commercialization in practice. Based on the analysis of the adaptations and (re)interpretations of the implemented model of commercialization in the different cases, this thesis argues that a new way of speaking about commercialization should be developed.

The European Study on Adult Well-being (ESAW), funded by the European Union, was conducted during 2002 and 2003 in Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and Sweden. The aim of the interdisciplinary study was the conceptual clarification and the identification of factors contributing to life satisfaction for older people. Five key components were included in the study: (1) physical health and functional status; (2) self-resources; (3) material security; (4) social support resources; and (5) life activity. A representative population of adults aged 50–90 years living independently (not institutionalised) was selected in each participating country, and the actual sample size came very close to the target of 2,000, ranging from 1,854 to 2,417. The total European sample comprised 12,478 respondents. In this paper, mean differences in general and domain-specific life satisfaction between the six countries including age groups and gender are reported and discussed with respect to contextual national characteristics. In general the findings showed a high level in all chosen indicators of life satisfaction across the six countries. National differences depended on the domain under consideration, but the results showed in general that The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Luxembourg and Austria had higher values of life satisfaction compared to Sweden and Italy.

Gerotranscendence defines a shift in meta-perspective from earlier materialistic and pragmatic concerns, toward more cosmic and transcendent ones in later life. Population-based studies that have empirically examined this concept using Tornstam's gerotranscendence scale, highlight cosmic transcendence as a core component, which includes a sense of belongingness with past and future generations. Such generative concerns may increase expectations regarding the quality of the bond with one's children in later life. This study examined whether the association between emotional support exchanged with children and feelings of loneliness later in life varied by the degree of cosmic transcendence of the older parent. Data from 1,845 older parents participating in a population-based study living in The Netherlands were analyzed from the 1995/1996 cycle of the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam. Interviews included self-report measures of cosmic transcendence, loneliness, emotional support exchanged with children, health indicators, and marital status. Results indicated that a negative association between loneliness and level of emotional support exchanged with children was more pronounced among older parents with higher cosmic transcendence scores, in particular among the married. It is argued that cosmic transcendence reflects a sense of generativity and an increased emotional dependency on children in later life. Under favorable social conditions (supportive relationships with children and being married) cosmic transcendent views had a positive impact on social well-being in later life. When children no longer met emotional needs of older parents, cosmic transcendence increased feelings of loneliness. © Springer-Verlag 2006.

With the fundamental rescaling of socio-economic relationships, the mega-city region (MCR) has emerged as an important geographical space for governance. At the same time it is highly fragmented institutionally, making it difficult to overcome collective action problems such as providing regional public transport and protecting open spaces. In practice, different arrangements are employed to address these problems, including hierarchical approaches, competitive self-coordination and joint decision-making. Drawing on experiences in five MCRs in Europe and the US, the relative use and success of these approaches was investigated. The analysis suggests that the composition of the actor constellation (e.g. the number and kind of parties involved) and local political support proved to be important factors in explaining the performance of a particular governance approach. In addition, the findings provide a new appreciation for the role of the state, particularly the national government, in governing MCRs.

The city-regional level has gained importance in various planning systems as a result of the continuous need to solve strategic planning issues that transcend political and jurisdictional boundaries. Governance through voluntary policy networks gained importance as a way to make policy objective delivery at this city-regional level more effective and efficient. However, the multilevel organized accountability of policy networks with different logics and rationalities challenges policy implementation processes. This paper develops a framework to analyze and understand how the structure of voluntary city-regional policy networks affects the effectiveness, efficiency, and democratic legitimacy of these networks and the policies they create. Using the case of the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area as an example, we show that city-region governance needs to involve not only government interests but also interests of market players and NGOs to become effective, efficient, and legitimate and that national policy interference is to a large extent incompatible with it. Keywords: city-region, governance, policy network, efficiency, effectiveness, legitimacy, the Netherlands, Amsterdam

Les processus de prévention et de résolution des conflits sont en grande partie basés sur l’idée qu’un changement positif peut être induit par des interventions ciblées et planifiées. Il faut pourtant éviter de surestimer l’impact de telles interventions. Cet article explore comment de jeunes civils qui ont été militarisés par le conflit ivoirien ont utilisé un instrument standard de réinsertion couramment employé dans les interventions internationales postconflits, en examinant les options de réinsertion offertes dans le cadre d’un projet pilote visant à réintégrer les ex-combattants. Du point de vue de ces jeunes, quels ont été les avantages et inconvénients à participer à un tel projet? Quels ont été les enjeux économiques et sociaux qui les ont motivés ? Comment utilisent-ils les perspectives de réinsertion que le projet leur propose et comment les ont-ils intégrées (ou non) avec d’autres activités plus lucratives mais en dehors du cadre du projet ? Enfin, dans quelle mesure leur participation au projet a-t-elle ou non facilité leur réinsertion sociale et économique ? L’essentiel des données est basé sur 200 entretiens semi-structurés à Guiglo et à Man, fiefs principaux des milices progouvernementales et de la rébellion à l’ouest de la Côte d’Ivoire.

There is broad and growing consensus regarding the central place of integrated Land Use and Transport (LUT) strategy development in establishing more efficient and sustainable urban environments. However, empirical evidence shows that such integration is hard to achieve in daily planning practice, due to many institutional barriers and substantive differences. More specifically, the tools developed to support LUT strategy development have very low implementation rates in daily planning practice. This paper introduces the concept of ‘knowledge generation’ as a potentially useful mechanism for closing the gap between support tools and planning practice. Through two specific Dutch planning cases, we analyze the applicability of this concept in supporting integrated LUT strategy development. The paper focuses on the developed strategies, how these differ from current practice, and how knowledge generation supported their development. We argue that socialization produces shared strategies and that effective socialization needs to be supported by efficient mutual exchange between tacit and explicit knowledge. We conclude by discussing the implications of this argument for the wider practice of LUTplanning integration.

The construction of imaginings of ‘Europe’ is increasingly closely intertwined with the institutions of the European Union (EU). Constitutional reform of the EU is therefore a crucial moment in the production and reproduction of European imaginaries and requires a cultural geography analysis of the public debates surrounding it and the resulting voting patterns. French and Dutch citizens, in referenda on 29 May and 1 June 2005 respectively, rejected the ratification of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. This article examines the highly contested visions of political elites and citizens in these two countries to explore how Europe is imagined and re-imagined in a period of rapid territorial and institutional change encompassing both the widening and the deepening of the EU. It focuses on two dimensions of integration: widening (ie. enlargement) and deepening (ie. institutional reforms towards more integration) and the associated visions of ‘Europe’ and ‘European-ness.’ Questions addressed i...

Adding to the growing body of research examining neighbourhood effects in European contexts, this study investigates the associations between the educational achievement of Dutch youth and their neighbourhood conditions. We further consider whether these associations vary by student socioeconomic status (SES), gender, or nativity. Results from a multilevel analysis of 17 836 secondary school students living in 3085 neighbourhoods indicate significant relationships between several dimensions of the neighbourhood context and educational achievement. Student SES and nativity appear to moderate some of these effects. In particular, we find the negative effect of neighbourhood disadvantage to be almost entirely restricted to native youth. The achievement outcomes of students with higher levels of SES also appear to be less affected by neighbourhood affluence and disadvantage than those of lower-SES students. Our results suggest that the impact of neighbourhood conditions on certain groups of youth may be obscured in studies that measure average neighbourhood effects across all individuals. Future research which examines neighbourhood effects and mechanisms across subgroups of youth, and which examines the links between the neighbourhood, family, and school contexts, can help us to better determine the neighbourhood's role in youth education.

In the debate on urban and regional competitiveness, it has become fashionable to stress the growing importance of creativity for economic development. Especially scientist-consultants with a keen eye for what politicians and business people want to hear have taken centre stage in this discussion. Each city and region in the advanced capitalist world seems to prefer a label as creative city or region, and all look after the same type of industries and try to produce the same set of conditions, while investing in higher education and research institutes, networking and lobbying institutions, and the promotion of spin-off companies. A vast number of leaders and spokesmen of local and regional (quasi) governments believe that a major thing to do is to become more attractive places to live for creative knowledge workers or the ‘creative class’, as it is euphemistically labelled.However, in academia there is a lot of scepticism with regard to the use of these concepts and their meaning for urban and regional competitiveness. Also citizen movements and NGOs, and some political parties, voice their concern about the extent to which policies that apply these concepts and ideas might only benefit an elite of higher educated, well- paid professionals while at the same time these policies might result in decline of other activities and in social polarisation and poverty as well.In this paper we contribute to the critical discussion through a critical appraisal of local experts’ views on developments in seven European city-regions, first with regard to policies towards the development of creative and knowledge-intensive industries; and secondly with regard to the impact the development of ‘creative knowledge regions’ may have in social and other respects. In contrast to the rather homogeneous yet dominant advice to facilitate ‘the creative class’, in this paper we will argue that a range of parameters related to the firms and regional institutional, geographical and historical contexts promote a much more diversified view on urban economic development.

Segregation of minority ethnic groups is a returning issue in public and political debates in many parts of the world. This paper focuses on Western European cities and presents information on levels and dynamics of segregation. While acknowledging the measurement problems, we feel comfortable in saying that overall segregation levels do not appear to increase. However, big differences exist, not just between immigrant groups in one city, but also between similar groups in different cities and countries. ‘Integration’ processes of those who settled a long time ago may be counterbalanced by new and difficult to predict immigration. Likely, individual preference, availability of resources, the role of the state, globalisation and economic restructuring as well as discrimination simultaneously impact on segregation.

The importance of developing global as well as local networks between tourism firms and clusters seeking to attain global competitiveness has been increasingly emphasized in previous studies. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of local and global networking in firms of different sizes and of differentiated cluster types (based on specialization and agglomeration) in tourism. This paper differs from previous researches in that it addresses the tourism dimension of the networking literature and employs a quantitative method of analysis based on a firm-level survey. The findings of this paper reveal that there is a positive relation between large firms and the global level of networking. The specialization and agglomeration of firms in a cluster does not determine the level of connectedness, but rather it is the size of the firm in a cluster that determines the level of networking of that cluster. Based on the research findings, the paper explores the necessity of developing networks not only at a local level but also at a global level by emphasizing the defining factors.

The story of the financial turmoil that swept the world in 2007 and 2008 has proven to be geographical to the bone. In this introduction to the special issue on ‘financial geographies’ we express concerns that the financial crisis and all it has showcased is going to be economic geography's ‘next missed boat’. We derive three problematics from the crisis—productivism, epochal thinking and rationality—and discuss the extent financial geography is positioned to address them. The second aim of the introduction is to present an overview of the papers in this special issue and the ways in which they take up the issues raised in this introduction.

Het Amsterdamse stadsbestuur meent met Plan 1012 de negatieve uitwassen van prostitutie te kunnen bestrijden door ramen op de Wallen te sluiten. De geschiedenis leert echter dat overheidsinterventies problemen in de prostitutie eerder ongrijpbaar maken en verplaatsen ispartof: Agora vol:25 issue:3 pages:14-17 status: published

We address two questions: to what extent does geographical distance to parents, siblings and children living outside the household influence receiving support from them? And to what extent does the availability of other network members living closer play a part in receiving support? We use the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study and logistic regression models of receiving support from parents, children and siblings. The results indicate a strong impact of distance on support from family members, particularly from siblings and fathers but less so from mothers and children. Particularly siblings, sons and mothers are more likely to provide support if there are no other family members living closer.

In 2003, Peru adopted the "Framework Law on participatory budgeting". It requires all the municipal and regional governments to institutionalize a yearly "participatory budgeting process". The Peruvian Participatory Budgeting (PB) is inspired on the PB-experiment in Porto Alegre, Brazil, but differs on a number of important principles of design. Building on the existing evaluations of the Peruvian nation-wide implementation of PB (2003-2007), this article addresses both the pitfalls and the transformative potential of Peruvian PB. It does so by contrasting the Peruvian PB with PB in Porto Alegre along the four dimensions on which transformation has been recorded in Porto Alegre: (1) citizens, (2) civil society, (3) the state and (4) civil society - state relations.

The experience of home is one of the most basic of daily-life experiences. Traditionally, the home is grounded in a specific place; in commuter partnerships, however, for part of the time one partner lives near the workplace and away from the family residence. This paper provides insight into the sense of home that relates to the dual-residence situation of a commuter partnership. The meaning of the residence near the workplace is analysed through three dimensions: material, activity patterns, and social. We further classified each dimension in a continuum of meanings of space, place or home. Empirical evidence comes from in-depth interviews with 30 commuter couples in the Netherlands. The results show that the material dimension is most often used to create a sense of home. The activity patterns are primarily focused on the job. The social dimension is the most difficult way of experiencing a home because there is yet a strong relationship between being with one's family and experiencing a sense of home. As a result, many feel as living two separated lives: a work life and a private life. Only a small minority experiences the commuter dwelling as a home away from home in all its three dimensions.

Higher education is the education level under the most pressure to be internationally liberalized. Currently, the main global instrument to achieve this liberalization goal is the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) of the World Trade Organization. In this paper, the process of trade liberalization of higher education in the GATS framework is examined. The analysis is divided into two main parts. First, the state of the current situation of higher education liberalization and that of other education sectors are reviewed and compared. Second, the factors that influence the undertaking of liberalization commitments on education, specifically higher education, are analyzed. To make these comparative analyses, EduGATS, a novel index to measure the degree of liberalization of educational services, is introduced.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the degree of ethnic residential segregation and diversification in Dutch neighbourhoods.Design/methodology/approachUsing data on neighbourhood level, the authors calculate segregation and diversification indices, and illustrate the distribution of main origin groups by cumulative distribution functions. A preliminary analysis is conducted to quantify the relationship between neighbourhood ethnic composition and economic outcomes (income and welfare dependency).FindingsNo evidence is found on the existence of mono‐ethnic neighbourhoods in The Netherlands. The higher concentration of non‐Western immigrants in the large cities occurs in neighbourhoods with a high degree of diversity from several origins. An apparent strong correlation between the concentration of non‐Western immigrants and the prevalence of social benefits is likely due to the composition effect. The findings counter the public opinion that ghetto‐like neighbourhoods are dominant. They suggest that neighbourhood housing composition plays possibly an important role to attract immigrants with a weak socio‐economic position, who are often from a variety of non‐Western countries, rather than from a single origin.Practical implicationsSocial policies aimed at improving neighbourhood quality affect non‐Western immigrants from different source countries simultaneously, as they tend to live together in immigrant neighbourhoods. But integration policies targeted at neighbourhoods are insufficient, as many immigrants live in areas with low immigrant density: policies targeted at individuals (and families) remain indispensable.Originality/valueThis is the first paper to document segregation and diversity in The Netherlands, using unique neighbourhood level data. Applying cumulative distribution functions to these issues is also novel.

In environmental planning, decision making on land use for infrastructureincreasingly causes conflicts, particularly with regard to contested waste facilities.Risk management and perceptions have become crucial. Empirical investigationsof these conflicts brought clear advancement in the fields of environmentalpsychology, geography and risk research. However, in planning and policy designthe dominant one-dimensional approach among planners remains, and theapproach to address resistance to facility siting is not firmly founded in empiricalevidence. Instead, it uses simplified assumptions about the motives of opponents,seeing residents as merely protecting their ‘turf’ and exclusively focusing on theirown ‘backyard’. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study on riskperceptions, based on a large-scale survey in six decision-making processes fordifferent types of waste facilities. A scale is developed to measure the planners’perspective of the motives for opposition. The analysis shows that the crucialfactors in perceived risk perceptions are not personality traits (e.g. selfishness,economic rationality) but perceived environmental injustice, fairness of theprocess, and personal commitment to others. Continual thinking in terms of‘backyard’ motives disregards the socially motivated norms for equity,fairness, and commitment to others and may easily undermine co-operativebehaviour.