in English Amsterdam is a unique combination of hydraulic engineering and built environment, urban design and city image, multiculturalism and neoliberalism, toleration and integration, commerce and business, culture and identity, individualism, and public decision-making among European cities. This thesis tries to explore Amsterdam's urban development in the contexts of urban planning, decision making, institutional policies and public participation. Moreover, this research studies the image of Amsterdam as a UNESCO world heritage site, the history of its urban development, its demography and immigrant population, and its municipal structure. The municipality of Amsterdam as the main actor of urban planning and development policies is studied for answering the research question: How does the municipality involve citizens in its urban development projects? To answer this question, of the seven districts of Amsterdam, the youngest district with the highest number of urban renewal projects is chosen: The Nieuw- West district, which is also the greenest and second-largest district of Amsterdam. By using content analysis from the municipality's website project information and Arnstein's ladder of participation in the methodology, the public participation framework and function is studied. The urban...

Sweden’s association for local authorities and Regions (SKR) has issued guidance to further institutionalise and systematise citizen dialogue in Swedish municipalities and regions. Gothenburg has ramped up citizen dialogue, particularly since the adoption of 7 principles for citizen dialogue in 2014. Since then, citizen dialogue has been developed using new methods to expand representation, engaging more citizens as well as to collect different new forms of knowledge. 7 interviewees working with citizen dialogue in various ways were interviewed to see their perceptions on citizen dialogue and to use those perceptions to analyse how the balance of power rests within the city of Gothenburg based on power and knowledge use as well as to what degree citizens participation in planning has improved since the adoption of the principles

The post-apartheid government inherited an urban housing backlog of approximately 1.3 million units at its inception in 1994. This huge backlog was partially contributed by apartheid discriminatory administrations and laws such as the Black (Native) Laws Amendment Act, No 46 of 1937 and the Black Communities Development Act, No 4 of 1984 along with rapid urbanization during the post-apartheid period. In a bid to address past injustice related to housing, it has become necessary for the post-apartheid government to diversify housing delivery approach to include alternative development and delivery strategies, methodologies and products including upgrading of informal settlements, and increasing rental stock. The human settlements department also encouraged the establishment and implementation of self-help housing through the establishment of the People Housing Process (PHP). It is the implementation of this programme that led to the establishment of the SACTSP aimed at enhancing South African housing service delivery using Cuban experience. The programme has been implemented in the South African human settlements sector since 2002. The focus of this research is to evaluate the impact of the South African Cuban Technical Support Programme (SACTSP) in the lives of the South African housing beneficiaries. The collected and analysed data, to a large degree, confirmed the effect of the programme in the lives of the beneficiaries. The research design of the study is a multiple Case Studies approach. The scope of the study is the three provinces participating in the SACTSP, which are Mpumalanga (MP), Western Cape (WC), and Limpopo (LP). The intention was to have both the control group and the intervention group in the same province, but due to the over usage of the CTA’s in these provinces the researcher decided to use Gauteng Province (GP), a non-participating province in the programme, as a control group. This is also due to the fact that the province (Gauteng) is also commonly known for publicly criticising the effectiveness of the SACTSP programme. Data was collected in three housing projects from the three Gauteng Metropolitan Municipalities Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and City of Johannesburg. The selected projects were Mamelodi Extension 5 in Tshwane, Villa Lisa (Boksburg) in Ekurhuleni and Driekiek Extension 3 in Orange Farm, Johannesburg. The selected projects where the CTAs participated (experimental group) were Chicago Bulls at Strand in Cape Town (WC), Thekwane South Housing Projects, Nelspruit in Mpumalanga and Westernburg at Polokwane in Limpopo Province. In each unit of evaluation, questionnaires to collect data were distributed to the rightful owners (beneficiaries) of the houses, who were above eighteen years of age. (Annexure A). The participants, all rightful owners of state subsidies, were identified by means of purposive sampling. The main goal of purposive sampling is to focus on particular characteristics of a population that are of interest, which will best enable the researcher to answer the research questions Semi-structured interview questions were also conducted to the main stakeholders in the housing circle. This includes officials in all spheres of government involves in delivering sustainable human settlements (Annexure B). The selection is also influenced by what is called the “good enough” rule in formulating evaluation research (Rossi et al., 2012:28). Stated simply the “good enough” rule advocates that the evaluator should choose the strongest possible design from a methodological stand point after having taken into account the potential importance of the results, the practicality and feasibility of each design and the probability that the design chosen will produce useful and credible results (Rossi et al., 2012:33) The collected data was analysed and presented in five principal stages involving descriptive and inferential statistics. The first phase involves presenting the reliability of the instrument using Cronbach’s alpha. The second phase presents the descriptive statistics of the sample using frequencies, and proportions for categorical data and means and standard deviations for continuous variables. The validity of the instrument then follows using exploratory factor analysis which explains the observed variables that are linked to underlying factors. The fourth phase involves calculation of composite variables using the means and averages to determine the trend patterns in the data. The central limit theorem was applied to the data and comparative analyses were done to determine whether views differed by socio-demographic variables. The two sample independent t-tests were done to determine whether views of the respondents differed for two-categorical variables and the one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to determine whether views differ for variables with more than two categories. The fifth stage presented the correlation analysis which was used to determine the extent or degree of the relationship between the constructs. The findings of the studies confirm the effectiveness of the programmes in the participating provinces. The study also discovered that, CTA’s are mostly transferring skills to contractors who happened to be working close to the CTAs and only to beneficiaries in a few instances. This is due to the nature of the self-help model that the South African government adopted which involves private contractors in building PHP houses. This model ignores the national PHP policy and guidelines which recognise beneficiaries as the main drivers of the PHP. The study concludes by recommending the department policy makers to monitor and enforce correct implementation of formulated policy to close the gaps that are usually created between policy formulation and implementation. / Public Administration and Management / D. Admin. (Public Administration)

Retirement homes provide a versatile facilities and services to their clients not only to secure the basic needs of seniors but also to offer an opportunity to satisfy their secondary needs for instance by participating on social events. Such involvement of seniors is beneficial for themselves and also for the whole society too. Theoretical part of my dissertation is focused on definition of the term participation, afterwards this term is put in relation to lives of seniors and their functioning in retirement homes. Next it also deals with recognizing the level of participation in an institution and what factors affect this level. Attention is directed on clients themselves during this process, how do they perceive participation, what barriers they see and on the other hand what opportunities motivate them to participate in social events. The main part of my work is dedicated to empirical research in the organization "Domov pro seniory Slunečnice" (Retirement Home Sunflower) where above mentioned topics are analy zed.

This study aims to analyze children's rights within camp activities, especially in terms of participation. More specifically, it analyzes activities conducted on Barnens Ö with the Stiftelsen Barnens Dag (the Foundation) as organizer. Through a keyword analysis, the Foundation's governing documents are linked to the relevant articles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In this part of the study, children's rights are analyzed in activities in general. The next part focuses on Article 12. Children have the right to express their views and be heard in all matters affecting them. The views of the child should be considered, respecting the child's age and maturity. In order to find out how children's views are taken into account in practice in the camp – and not only in policy documents – camp staff are interviewed. Children's participation is analyzed using Roger Hart's ladder of participation and Harry Shier's model of pathways to participation.  The results of the study indicate that the Foundation does solid work regarding children's rights, sometimes going beyond the Convention on the Rights of the Child. One observation is that how to work with children's participation differs among the farms on Barnens Ö. All farms work hard to ensure that children express their opinions and that their opinions are considered. It is less common for children to be involved in decision-making, but it does happen occasionally. / Denna studie syftar till att analysera barns rättigheter inom kolloverksamheten, särskilt vad gäller delaktighet. Mer specifikt analyseras verksamhet som bedrivs på Barnens Ö med Stiftelsen Barnens Dag (Stiftelsen) som arrangör. Genom en nyckelordsanalys kopplas Stiftelsens styrdokument ihop med de relevanta artiklarna i Förenta Nationernas konvention om barnets rättigheter (Barnkonventionen). I denna del av studien analyseras barns rättigheter över lag inom verksamheten. Nästkommande del fokuserar på Artikel 12. Barn har rätt att uttrycka sin mening och höras i alla frågor som rör barnet. Hänsyn ska tas till barnets åsikter, utifrån barnets ålder och mognad. För att ta reda på hur barns åsikter beaktas praktiskt inom kolloverksamheten och inte endast inom styrdokument, intervjuas personal inom kolloverksamheten. Barns delaktighet analyseras med hjälp av Roger Harts delaktighetsstege och Harry Shiers modell för vägar till delaktighet.  Resultaten av studien indikerar att Stiftelsen Barnens Dag gör ett gediget arbete gällande barns rättigheter, där det stundtals går längre än Barnkonventionen. En iakttagelse är att arbetet med barns delaktighet skiljer sig någon mellan gårdarna på Barnens Ö. Samtliga gårdar jobbar mycket med att barnen ska uttrycka sina åsikter samt att barnens åsikter beaktas. Mer ovanligt är att barnen faktiskt är med vid beslutfattandet, men stundtals sker också det.

Följande studie är en kvalitativ dokumentstudie vars syfte är att genom en diskursanalys utifrån Ernesto Laclau och Chantal Mouffe’s (2001; 2008) diskursteori utforska på vilket sätt barnet, dess delaktighet och dess bästa framställs i tingsrätten. Studien har undersökt detta i domar från tingsrätten gällande umgänge med umgängesstöd enligt 6 kap. §15c föräldrabalken (FB) (SFS 1949:381). De juridiska ramar gällande barnet, som finns i föräldrabalken och barnkonventionen (Lag [SFS 2018:1197] om Förenta nationernas konvention om barnets rättigheter), tyder på att barnet besitter en stark ställning gentemot vuxna, men forskning visar på att barn sällan får möjlighet att delta och sällan får sin vilja hörd. Studiens empiriska material består av 21 domar gällande umgänge med umgängesstöd från tingsrätten. Studien har utgångspunkt i socialkonstruktionismen och för att fördjupa analysen och för att bidra till diskussionen har inslag av barndomssociologiska perspektiv samt Roger Harts delaktighetsstege (1992) tillämpats. Laclau och Mouffe presenterar i sin diskursanalys flertalet centrala begrepp, men vi har fokuserat på begreppen diskurs, flytande signifikanter och subjektspositioner som är av störst relevans utifrån studiens syfte och frågeställningar. De diskurser om barnet som identifierats i materialet är; den familjeorienterade, skyddsorienterade och rättighetsorienterade diskursen. De flytande signifikanter som urskilts är; barnets bästa, umgängesstöd och barnets mognad. Till sist, de subjektspositioner vi ser att barnet placeras i är; rättighetsbäraren och skyddsobjektet. Studien visar på att det är långt ifrån självklart hur barnets bästa ska bedömas i tingsrättens domar samt att möjligheterna till delaktighet för barn är begränsade av olika faktorer så som påverkan av vuxna samt barnets mognad och ålder. Hur barnet framställs är inte heller givet då det är något som är beroende av barnets subjektsposition som i sin tur påverkas av vilken diskurs som råder. Studiens resultat lämnar oss undrande om insatsen ”umgänge med umgängesstöd” i själva verket beviljas för barnen, eller om den beviljas utifrån föräldrarnas bästa. / The following study is a qualitative document study whose purpose is to explore the way in which the child, its participation and its best interests are presented in the district court through a discourse analysis based on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory (2001; 2008). The study has examined judgments from the district court regarding supervised visitation according to Chapter 6 §15c Children and Parents Code (FB) (SFS 1949:381). The legal framework regarding the child, presented in the Children and Parents Code and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Law [SFS 2018:1197] on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child), indicates that the child possesses a strong position in relation to adults, but research shows that children rarely get the opportunity to participate and rarely get their will heard. The study's empirical material consists of 21 judgments regarding supported visitation from the district court. These have been analyzed with the help of a discourse analysis to examine how the district court portrays the child, their participation, and the best interest of the child. The study is based on a social constructionist theory. To deepen the analysis the study has also used sociological perspectives on children and childhood and Roger Hart's ladder of participation (1992) to contribute to the discussion. Laclau and Mouffe present in their discourse analysis several central concepts, but the following study has used the concepts that are the most relevant based on the studies’ aim and research questions. The discourses about the child that have been identified in the material are the family-oriented, protection-oriented, and rights-oriented discourse. The floating signifiers determined are the best interests of the child, supported visitation and the child's maturity. And finally, the subject positions we see the child placed in are the rights-holder and the object of protection. The study shows that it is far from obvious how the best interests of the child should be assessed in the district court's judgments and that the opportunities for participation for children are limited by several different factors such as influence from adults and the children’s maturity and age. How the child is portrayed is also not given as it is something that is dependent on the child's subject position, which in turn is affected by the prevailing discourse. Based on the results of the study we ask ourselves if the intervention “supervised visitation” is granted for the children, or if it is granted based on the parents' rights and needs.