How can cities prevent young people from getting pulled into crime? Why do so many people get lost in the maze of agencies, forms and support systems? And how can development plans better reflect what a neighborhood actually needs? Local residents are often the best researchers when it comes to questions like these, as the documentary Happy Socks: The Movie shows. Yet their knowledge still does not play a large enough role in policy and decision-making about the city.

It is a busy Wednesday morning at Gemaal op Zuid in Rotterdam, home to the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative. In the neighborhood kitchen, large pans are simmering on the stove for a catering order. Outside, at the Grondstoffenstation resource station, a team started early collecting and sorting waste from the Afrikaandermarkt.

Dozens of residents from the Afrikaanderwijk do paid work through the cooperative. Work that was once often outsourced to companies from outside the neighborhood is now organized locally and carried out by residents themselves. In addition to catering, waste processing, cleaning and textile production, residents also work as researchers. They put important issues on the agenda, design research projects and carry them out together with academics.

Wijkwijs

The Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative is part of Wijkwijs, a collective of Rotterdammers and knowledge partners who work together on issues that residents themselves consider important.

“We try to do research in a different way,” says Wijkwijs researcher Els Leclercq of Design & Publics in the documentary, which features interviews at Gemaal op Zuid with residents, researchers and others involved. Within Wijkwijs, residents are more than research participants. And they are more than co-researchers, Leclercq says. They are the driving force behind the research.

This marks a break with the traditional model of academic research, in which scholars conduct studies and publish their findings in academic journals. Although citizens are increasingly involved in research, it is rarely done in their service or under their leadership.

The maze of service counters

The documentary shows what this radically different approach to research looks like in practice, and why it produces crucial knowledge for a city like Rotterdam. Residents speak, for example, about the “lokettenjungle”: the tangle of different agencies, forms and regulations people encounter when they seek help.

Rotterdammers who turn to a support organization because they seek help, even for relatively simple problems, often get stuck in the complex systems of social support. In the film, residents explain exactly where things go wrong.

According to Leclercq, this kind of knowledge is difficult to obtain in other ways. “Residents have experiential knowledge and situated knowledge,” she says. That knowledge should be an important foundation for policy in Rotterdam. “This knowledge is needed to make policy more appropriate, more human and more just. After all, policy is made for citizens.”

A central role in decision-making

Yet residents are often brought into plans for their neighborhood, and decisions that affect them, only at a late stage. Once the main outlines have already been set, residents may be given the chance to voice an opinion or contribute an idea. “Residents are then asked to participate, while the fundamental choices have already been made,” Leclercq says.

A project in Kralingen-Oost that Leclercq was involved in shows that things can be done differently. There, residents and local organizations worked together on a program of requirements for their neighborhood. It sets out what they consider important, for example when it comes to mobility, green space and public amenities. Developers must then show how they have taken those priorities into account in their plans.

“If you give residents a central role in these kinds of processes, different issues come to the table and plans are much better aligned with what is happening in the neighborhood,” Leclercq says. Institutional players are quite open to involving residents earlier, she adds. For example, the Happy Socks — as the citizen researchers of the Afrikaanderwijk Cooperative call themselves — are now brought in at an early stage by clients such as TNO, the Municipality of Rotterdam and the Ombudsman.

The best advisers for new policy

According to Marianne van den Anker, Rotterdam’s ombudsman, residents are “the best researchers, advisers and sources of inspiration” when developing new policy for the city. “And they are also the ones who carry it,” she says in the film.

Jurian Edelenbos, professor of public administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam and also involved in Wijkwijs, sees this as part of a broader challenge for local government. Municipalities need residents in order to tackle complex problems around poverty, safety and health, he says. But their input should not merely be collected. It must also be clear that something is being done with it.

Responsive government

This benefits not only residents, but also city government. “The municipality can build trust by acting responsively,” says Edelenbos. “That means taking residents’ input and initiatives seriously and visibly following up on them.”

That does not mean every proposal should be adopted, Edelenbos emphasizes. But residents should be able to see what happens to their input. And if the city cannot respond to needs or suggestions, it should be clear why.

If that follow-up is missing, there are consequences. “If governments say they value input but then do nothing with it, trust erodes.”

From the city to city hall

At Gemaal op Zuid and in other Wijkwijs practices, knowledge is being developed about major issues that both the municipality and residents are grappling with: from work and income to social support and safety, and from heat stress and flooding to the housing market.

But at present, this knowledge does not automatically find its way to city hall. Leclercq, Edelenbos and other Wijkwijs researchers argue that residents should be structurally involved in plans and decisions about the city.

Universities and knowledge institutions, too, are working to give citizens a central place in the production of knowledge. Erasmus University Rotterdam, TU Delft, Leiden University, Erasmus MC and Leiden University Medical Center, for example, have joined forces the Hub for Impactful and Engaged Research (HIER).

Through the hub, the universities aim to strengthen the role of citizen science and connect existing initiatives that are still highly fragmented.

“We need a shift,” says Leclercq. “From consultation after the fact to genuine co-creation and shared decision-making.”