General

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) stimulates projects, where university researchers can submit their own research ideas, and special programmes. Programmes that provide substantial opportunities for urban research include: Shifts in Governance; Social Cohesion , and Urbanization and Urban Culture. The last programme was initiated in 2003 but the different project teams started their research only at September 2006. Five programmes have been selected: 

1. Town and Countryside: the dynamic symbiosis. The case of the northern Duchy of Brabant (13^th-16^th centuries). An archaeological-historical research programme
2. The town as ‘body social’, 1300-1650
3. Children and Migrant Entrepreneurs in the Maelstrom of Repressive Tolerance: an Alternative History of the Dutch City
4. Places and their Culture: the Evolution of Dutch Cultural Industries from an International Perspective, 1600-2000
5. Urban nebula: metamorphosis of the Schiphol region in the twentieth century