Lifestyle Orientations in Community Participation: An Analysis of Lombok-Leidseweg, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Abstract

This study titled “Lifestyle Orientations in Community Participation: An Analysis of Lombok-Leidseweg, Utrecht, The Netherlands” was designed to discover associations between lifestyle orientations and activity in community participation activities. Numerous scholars consider community participation as a useful means to enhance a neighborhood’s social space. By encouraging contact with space and fellow residents, participation activities have the ability to bring about individual and community benefits. In Lombok-Leidseweg in particular, community participation may prove valuable to local governments and residents, since in the area tensions between different sociocultural and socioeconomic residents prevail.

This thesis argues that in order to efficiently and effectively enhance and encourage participation, local governments and participators should assume a citizen-oriented perspective that carefully takes into account people’s differences. Differentiating individuals based on their lifestyle orientation is believed to be most appropriate, since it is a characteristic that is able to holistically describe individuals. Moreover, this study argues that both participators and nonparticipators and their experiences should be taken into account in order to provide a comprehensive perspective on community participation. 263 residents of Lombok-Leidseweg were included in the research and quantitative data was used to determine the association between their lifestyle orientation and community participation.

The results of this study showed, firstly, that residents of Lombok-Leidseweg can successfully be distinguished based on their lifestyle. After having identified five lifestyle dimensions that influence people’s social and spatial behavior (i.e. the Locally Engaged and Idealistic Dimension, the Enterprising and Self-Development Dimension, the Social Dimension, the Neighborhood Dimension and the Personal Environment Dimension), residents that scored on the dimensions relatively similarly were grouped into lifestyle orientations. The five lifestyle orientations are the Stable and Traditional Orientation, the Familist and Enterprising Orientation, the Boundless and Vital Orientation, the Public and Social Orientation and the Solitary and Secure Orientation. The results subsequently indicate that in Lombok-Leidseweg, the lifestyle dimensions and orientations are significantly related to taking part in the maintenance of green spaces and social activities in public space, and between lifestyle orien tation and organizing community gardening activities and social activities in public space. Moreover, participation activities account for positive individual as well as community benefits, but are most likely to do so if people participate together and if they care for the neighborhood’s social space. Reasons for nonparticipation mainly include ignorance about activities and self-exclusion.

The results of this study encompass a comprehensive description of community participation in the research area, which may be valuable to local governments and participators that seek to enhance or encourage participation activities in the neighborhood. Depending on what they seek to achieve (i.e. physical improvements, social improvements or higher levels of participation in general), addressing or investing in particular types of people may prove more worthwhile than others. This study thus provides local governments and participators a tool to efficiently and effectively enhance community participation.