#Inclusion
Requests

Wil jij de status quo uitdagen en bijdragen aan een mobiel ecosysteem dat privacy, duurzaamheid en ethische technologie vooropstelt?
💡 Bij Waag Futurelab zijn we vastbesloten om alternatieven te verkennen voor de datahongerige apps en apparaten die momenteel de techwereld domineren. Via ons onderzoeksproject Mobifree nodigen we organisaties in de publieke sector uit om een open-source Murena-smartphone te testen en samen met ons de toekomst van ethische, open-source mobiele technologie in Europa vorm te geven.
Dit is jouw kans om:
✅ Als organisatie Murena-smartphones te testen, voorzien van open-source apps.
✅ Feedback te geven die direct invloed heeft op de volgende generatie mobiele oplossingen.
✅ Bij te dragen aan een duurzaam, veilig en inclusief alternatief voor Big Tech.
🔍 Wat kun je verwachten?

• Doe mee aan een pilot van twee maanden (februari–oktober 2025) en verken hoe open-source tools jouw werk- en persoonlijke behoeften kunnen ondersteunen.
• Test baanbrekende technologie terwijl je pleit voor ethische en duurzame softwareontwikkeling.
• Maakt deel uit van een community die een privacy gerichte en Big Tech-vrije toekomst vormgeeft!

🙌 Wie kan deelnemen?
We een groep van maximaal 30 deelnemers om de volgende kerngebieden te verkennen:

• Besturingssystemen
• Messaging-apps
• Appstores
• Cloudservices

📩 Hoe kun je je aanmelden?
Stuur een e-mail naar bente[at]waag[dot]org met de naam van je organisatie, het aantal deelnemers, gekozen categorieën en een korte motivatie om mee te doen. Vervolgens zullen wij contact met je opnemen!
Doe met ons mee om mobiele technologie opnieuw vorm te geven voor een betere, privacy-respecterende Europa 🌟

My name is Pınar Ebe-Güzgü, a PhD student at İzmir Katip Çelebi University, Turkey, currently conducting research at the University of Twente. My doctoral research focuses on social justice and disadvantaged groups in the context of smart city applications, with a particular emphasis on the mobility of elderly people (defined by WHO as people over the age of 65).

As part of my research, I conduct in-depth interviews with residents (aged 65+) of Amsterdam, caretakers of elderly individuals, and those working on (or with expertise in) smart city initiatives. The goal is to explore the mobility experiences of 65+ people in Amsterdam and develop policy recommendations to enhance social justice in urban management.

If you would like to share your experiences, your participation in this research would be invaluable. All interviews will be conducted at a time and format that suits you.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Your insights will greatly contribute to our understanding of how smart city applications impact the mobility and quality of life of older individuals.

If you are interested in participating, please reach out to me via the email address below:
p.ebe-guzgu@utwente.nl

Best regards,
Pınar Ebe-Güzgü

Dear all,

my name is Beatrice Egidi and I am a recently graduated architect from Italy. I had the opportunity of visiting Amsterdam a good number of times in the last two years and I am starting to hope to move there! I even started to learn a bit of Dutch... Moedig, toch?

If anyone has good advices on how to enter the job market here, they would be really appreciated!
Please have a look to my CV at the following link:
Egidi Beatrice CV_2024.pdf

Kind regards and thank you in advace to anyone who may help! Ciao!

Hallo allemaal, Fijne woensdag, 😀 (English below)

Wij willen graag begrijpen en leren oof participatie in de gebouwde omgeving de moeite waard is en welke uitdagingen je daarbij bent tegengekomen.

Vul deze enquête van 30 seconden (max. 1 minuut) in en kijk wat andere professionals ervaren.

Cheers,

Playground Team

www.plgrnd.city

----------------

Hello all, Happy Wednesday, 😀

We would like to understand and learn if participation in the built environment is worth it and what challenges you have experienced with it.

Please complete this 30-second (max 1 minute) survey and see what other professionals experience.

Cheers,

Playground Team
www.plgrnd.city

Dear reader,

I am Estefanía Morás, and I am a master student in Industrial Design at the University of Twente, currently working on an exciting research project. This project focuses on supporting transdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder collaboration in smart city initiatives and is supervised by Dr.ir. Deger Ozkaramanli (link). Current issues in smart cities cannot be tackled by a single profession or a discipline, yet bringing together multiple stakeholders from different backgrounds requires tools and methods that are tailored to their needs to ensure fruitful collaboration. I would like to address this challenge by designing a toolkit (physical or digital) that will facilitate managing value conflicts that may emerge among various stakeholders when trying to jointly define a ‘problem’ or find ‘common ground’.

To do this properly, I need input from both researchers and practitioners. This will ensure that the toolkit will be both evidence-based (based on the latest scientific research) as well as relevant for practitioners working in smart city projects such as yourself. Would you be available for a 1-hour interview with me to discuss a specific smart city project that you have been involved in? The emphasis in this interview will be on the opportunities and challenges that emerged in the collaboration (the process) and not so much on specific smart city technologies.

The date of this interview entirely depends on your availability, but if possible, I would like to meet before the end of September.

Hi everyone, I am Kyaw and currently studying master's in Urban Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change at Erasmus University Rotterdam. As I am currently doing my master thesis in Buiksloterham, I would like to conduct the interviewees with the residents and future residents of the district.

I would like to ask the questions about why the residents are using renewable energy systems in the existing households in that neighbourhoods and how they can communicate with their neighbour to increase the sense of community.

Please let me know where I can find the interviewees and distribute the surveys

If you are a user of voice assistants, you have probably experienced misunderstandings, especially if you are a woman or have an accent.  One of the reasons behind misunderstandings is bias in voice biometrics. This is not a problem if you’re a white US male, but for the rest of us, voice-based systems may be biased.

If you use Google Assistant, whether you use the Assistant App, use Google Home, or Google Nest, you can help mitigate bias in voice biometrics by donating your voice records.

In the process, you will be able to explore your data before committing to donate it.
To do so:

1. Download a copy of your Google Assistant records (See detailed instructions)
2. Upload your data to our Data Donation Platform and explore it
3. Decide what exactly you want to share and donate your data!

We will use the donated data to develop design guidelines and construct an evaluation dataset that reflects real-life usage conditions of voice biometrics technology. In addition, you can participate in a follow-up interview to delve into your personal experience with voice assistants and further explore your data.

This project is part of my PhD research and your contribution would be greatly appreciated! Feel free to reach out :)

I am currently conducting research on climate adaptation strategies in London and Amsterdam for the university of Amsterdam. I am approaching this topic from a social justice lens, i.e. understanding how the city is incorporating social justice in its climate adaptation strategies and policies.

I am currently looking for community organisations that are involved in projects that are directly or indirectly involved with tackling the urban heat island effect. This could be projects that seek to increase green spaces, improve how homes perform during heatwaves or even raise awareness on these issues in their community.

Any help is appreciated!

Hi community,

I am looking for inspiration on nature-based solutions in Amsterdam. I have a full day in Amsterdam the 6 th of October 2021, and I would love to visit locations having implemented nature-based solutions in impressive ways. I am curious about how Amsterdam has worked with urban biodiversity and how Amsterdam has implemented large-scale nature-based solutions, e.g. green corridors or other kinds of 'wild nature' in the city, for the benefit of people and other species :)

I hope you can help me with advices on where to go and whom to talk with?

My research project: Biocities of the future
The ambition is to develop initiatives that can help urban stakeholders integrate nature-based ideas and design strategies in urban development. The project includes prototyping a dialogue tool and testing if it could supplement the international certification tool DGNB Urban Districts.

I study how nature-based ideas integrate in urban development of today, and I identify some of the main drivers, paradoxes, consequences, and challenges, related to these integrations. The project focus is urban development inspired by nature’s ability to regenerate, through e.g., biomimicry and regenerative and biophilic design thinking.

My research is based on a cooperation between three Danish organisations:
City & Port - develop large scale urban areas in Copenhagen, DK
The Royal Danish Academy - Architecture, Design, Conservation
Bloxhub Science Forum - a nordic innovation hub for sustainable urbanization

You can read more about the research project using the website link

Begin dit jaar is het ‘Manifest Burgerberaad Klimaat en Milieu’ gelanceerd. Een coalitie van burgers en organisaties roept de politiek op een ambitieus burgerberaad in te stellen, waarin burgers maatregelen bedenken om de klimaatcrisis te bestrijden en biodiversiteitsverlies tegen te gaan. Ik ondersteun dit manifest van harte omdat ik erin geloof dat een grotere betrokkenheid van burgers bij deze grote uitdaging leidt tot betere en eerlijkere oplossingen. Jij ook? Teken het manifest!

De opwarming van de aarde raakt alles en iedereen. Om de aarde leefbaar te houden zijn snel grote veranderingen nodig. De Nederlandse overheid (gemeenten, provincies en Rijk) lijken nog onvoldoende in staat om tot een toereikende, integrale aanpak van de klimaatcrisis te komen. Een belangrijke barrière is dat moeilijke keuzes (bijvoorbeeld rondom de plaatsing van windmolens of het inperken van de intensieve landbouw) uit de weg worden gegaan. Ook worden burgers onvoldoende en vaak veel te laat betrokken bij de voorgestelde oplossingen, wat leidt tot vertraging en weerstand.

Waarom een burgerberaad?
Een burgerberaad is een onafhankelijk georganiseerde werkwijze waarbij een gelote dwarsdoorsnede van de Nederlandse bevolking zich laat informeren door experts en belanghebbenden. Vrij van lobby en verkiezingsdruk ontwikkelen zij maatregelen die eerlijk en toereikend zijn, en bovendien gesteund worden door de samenleving. Onder andere dit rapport van de OECD laat zien dat deze democratische methode in het buitenland goed werkt om hete hangijzers aan te pakken. Een belangrijke voorwaarde is dat het proces transparant wordt ingericht.

Lees en teken het manifest

Ecodam is a young initiatief aimed at creating a place where young people will learn about and help build the circular economy. Ecodam is not highbrow and elitair but inclusive, hands-on, fun and accessible. We use design thinking principles, letting visitors operate as designers and makers. Thinking of new solutions for real problems and making new, circular, products.

Ecodam is currently looking for partners to help us realise our dream and a location for a pilot lab.

ideas and tips are welcome!

Do you know a great example of high density living environments built within the last 30 years? Share your knowledge and contribute to the creation of an open repository via Crowd Creation. To be truly exemplary, the area should include a mixture of functions (at least some of them high-rise) where the physical fabric retains a human scale at street level despite the high density.

You may wonder who's asking for and compiling this information: the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences is committed to building an open-access repository. Sharing best practices across the globe is becoming increasingly vital, especially as many of our western cities are on the eve of unprecedented densification. As a humble thank you for helping to guide this societal challenge, they've allotted 12 rewards for contributors. Click here to submit a project.

Societal Context
Like many of our Western cities, Amsterdam is on the brink of intensive urban densification. The metropolitan area of Amsterdam plans to add 100,000 new dwellings, mostly within the existing urban fabric. Compact studio apartments and new situational typologies of high-rises are part of the program, which will increase the densification even further. How are we to retain a human scale in these new high-density environments, especially at the street level where our social fabric is shaped? This calls for a new array of examples and precedent studies of successful existing "Great High Density Environments." What are their design properties and how are they programmed? How do they succeed in retaining a human scale?

Amsterdam - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Sensing Streetscapes Project

These questions are central to the Sensing Streetscapes Project initiated by the Chair of Spatial Urban Transformation at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). In a consortium of spatial design offices and clients of large scale projects, action research is explored along three lines. First, building on the classic works of Allan Jacobs, Jan Gehl and the like, six of the most-used reference locations for these new environments are deconstructed by research through design. Second, neuro-architectural technologies (eye-trackers) are deployed to uncover the visual impact of the applied design principles: What are the patterns? Do these design solutions indeed mitigate the high density and intensity to a human scale on the level of the streetscape? Finally, an algorithm is developed to trace the most suitable best practices via AI. That’s where you come in.

Cassilis Road, London - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

Repository of Great Examples by Crowd Creation
Some high profile examples of great high density environments are well known, like in Vancouver, Toronto, London, Manchester, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Manhattan. Yet what lesser-known examples of Great High Density Living Environments are out there for us to learn from? Share your knowledge and contribute to the creation of an open repository via Crowd Creation.

In order to frame the search, a list of desired characteristics:

• Residential environment in an inner city area
• Built within the last 30 years – or about to be 'opened' soon
• Built for High Density with some high-rise buildings
• Success in creating a human scale at eye-level on the street
• Some level of mixed functions, green design, etc. - anything that increases the livability of the environment

Click here to submit a project.

Hardman Street, Manchester - Image Courtesy of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences

You are, of course, allowed to offer one of your own projects as an example. The deadline for submissions is January 29th, 2021 and as a modest gesture of thanks for helping address this societal challenge, 12 rewards are available to contributors. Out of the projects that fit the characteristics, consortium members will select the contributors who delivered either multiple great examples, surprisingly interesting examples, or in-depth descriptions and pictures. 12 entrants will be randomly selected to be rewarded:

• 2 will receive personalized book selections on this topic (favorites of the Chair)
• 6 will receive an Amazon gift card with a value of €50
• 4 will receive a ticket to the Media Architecture Biennale 2021
• Winners will be notified personally

Visit the results at https://sensingstreetscapes.com. The website will remain open afterwards, so feel free to keep sending your examples!

Hey! I am a student from Finland looking to write my dissertation about the way city based festivals can thrive sustainably in a 'post-Covid-19' world and tackle sustainability issues with the support and co-creation of initiatives of the 'smart city' as well as city council.

Essentially I am aiming to argue how 'smart city' initiatives such as seen in Amsterdam and Helsinki could help festival management engage better with tackling sustainability issues cheaply, by for example offering event spaces, expertise, waste management which can be expensive processes...

Any advice is much appreciated, thank you !!

Hi im currently doing a dissertation on smart city technology in Amsterdam im really wanting to have peoples views on it. How they feel about the tecnology and whether they have liked the changed around roads and bike lanes etc in the past 10 years or so, im really wanting to know if people know about all the tech incorporated into the city. If anyone would like to get intouch if you feel you could help please send an email to sunnyhowd@outlook.com or message me on here would love to hear from you all!

Kind Regards
Sunny

Hi all! I am Siddharth, a master student at the AMS Institute. For my thesis, I am researching how citizen engagement can contribute to evaluation/assessment of smart city and smart city projects with respect to quality of life. Quality of life is a basic compnent of the smart city but evaluation for quality of life does not happen successfully. How can citizen engagement fill the gap in assessing the smart city and smart projects for quality of life?
If you are a citizen, researcher, project developer, innovator or public official who has any insights or interest in this topic and would like to contribute to my research project please do contact me. I look forward to talking to you!
Cheers!

Withdrawal and indifference to difference has been the prerogative of every day since an unpredictable event, an unprecedented Epidemic, knocked on our doors, without it, to distinguish our origins, or our ideologies.

While many finally waited until the notion of “living together” was finally going to become a reality, nature imposed on us a physical and social distancing, to protect our health and that of others.

European can show resilience, even Resistance, in the face of adversity.
As such, while paradoxically, we are forced to distance ourselves, born a great movement of solidarity and communication.

So let us hope that this serious health crisis is a lesson for us, and that once this ordeal is behind us, "the notion of living together with respect for diversity" becomes obvious.

DIDIER HADDAD
TOULOUSE FRANCE

Warm greetings to everyone!

My name is Zuzana and I am doing my bachelor thesis about the impact of civic hacking on government transparency. If you are working for the municipality of Amsterdam or you identify yourself as a civic hacker than I have an interesting offer for you!

What I need from you as a participant:
- You either work for the municipality of Amsterdam or identify yourself as a civic hacker and
you have been involved in a project where the mutual collaboration took place.
- You are willing to do an interview with me and answer questions like how the collaboration itself looked like, what was the input of civic hackers, and in what ways this input helped to achieve effective outcomes, i.e. improve the information exchange between citizens and the municipality.

What you get from me as a participant:
- You will have a chance to share your experience over a nice cup of coffee or tea
- You will help me with my research and eventually contribute to creating more understanding of how the public sector can benefit from collaboration with civic hackers.

In total, I am looking for 10 participants. If you are interested or know someone who can help me, please send me a message on zuzka.kapustikova@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

Zuzana

I am a Smart Cities Consultant, actively looking for opportunities in the areas of Smart Cities, Digital Transformation, Livable Cities, Sustainable Development, Urban Mobility, ICT/ IoT, Strategy Planning, Project Management, Urban Management, Urban Economic Development, Urban Governance, Feasibility Studies, Technical Research, and Development.
I hold a Masters degree from Germany with specialization in Urban Agglomerations. I would be happy to hear from you pointing out at any leads or opportunities.
Thanks in advance,
Kind Regards,
Anuradha

De universiteit Nantes zoekt Amsterdammers voor een onderzoek naar de impact van stadsnatuur op de gezondheid en het welzijn van stadsbewoners. Dit onderzoek maakt onderdeel uit van Nature4Cities (www.nature4cities.eu) een project gericht op klimaatverandering in de stad. Nature4Cities onderzoekt de mogelijkheden om de effecten van klimaatverandering aan te pakken door meer stadse natuur te creeeren (Nature-based Solutions).
Jouw bijdrage wordt zeer op prijs gesteld!

De link naar de vragenlijst: https://lnkd.in/gU2VbRs

Hi all, my name is Sam and I have an idea for an urban living lab that facilitates the social and cultural integration of refugee communities. I am seeking practical steps for where to start.

The purpose of this project is to understand the potential for intentional cultural enclaves to facilitate the integration of immigrants and members of the host society by catalyzing meaningful relationships, interactions, and cultural exchange through culturally specific businesses, services, and activities. Through experimentation, analysis, and refinement, the model would ultimately be replicable in any city and serve as an epicenter for meaningful cultural exchange, ultimately leading to true integration (not to be confused with assimilation) and a more culturally rich city as a whole.

The concept is an alternative to contemporary integration policy and programs, such as the Dutch dispersal policies, that force citizens of a different racial, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds to live in a single residential area. I do not believe these contemporary policies contribute to the highest degree of social and cultural integration.

Any information, advice, and partnership recommendations to develop on this urban living lab concept is much appreciated.

Additionally, I have not gotten to talk to many people about this concept, so if I have no explained clearly, please don’t hesitate to ask any questions and I will happily provide clarification!

Thank you and all the best,

Sam