From Citizen-Led Street Experiments to Transformative Change: A Case Study in Improving School Environments in the Netherlands
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Recent scholarship has outlined the mechanisms, impacts, and limitations of street experiments. This paper applies those insights to a citizen-led street experiment aimed at enhancing the resilience of a school environment in Ede, the Netherlands. The project successfully improved physical resilience with greenery, improved microclimates, fostered neighbourhood cohesion, created playspaces, and reduced car traffic. While citizens in fluenced radical, feasible, and communicative aspects, they had limited control over strategic and challenge-driven elements. As a result, the experiment's broader transitional impact depended heavily on support from key stakeholders like school management and municipal authorities. Despite notable behavioural and material transformations, institutional and organizational, shifts were minimal. The absence of sustained ownership puts the physical successes achieved under continuous pressure. Future action-oriented research should investigate how to consolidate resilient street initiatives by addressing the complexities of individual learning and creating supportive environments for citizen-led experimentation.
Source: Built Environment
Authors: Marco Te Brömmelstroet, Sjoerd Brandsma
Language: English
Subfield: Urban Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4414027767