Floating Homes| The Truth of Sustainable Integration in Dutch Policy Making

• Main Author: Hutsler, Olivia
• Language: EN
• Published: The American University of Paris (France) 2019
• Subjects: European studies|Public policy|Sustainability
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=13871678

<p> Floating homes in the Netherlands are presented to consumers as a new sustainable and adaptable technology to climate change. With the rainfall increasing and flood levels rising in the Netherlands, there is a chance that the country can be inhabitable. Many countries throughout the world are adapting sustainable techniques into their public policies to fight off climate change. Sustainable technologies allow for certain countries to move forward with a new market trend in order to keep up with international competition. The Dutch government specifically has a reputation of inertia throughout policy making, but now the Dutch have a new environmentally sustainable technology that has a chance to change the market. That technology is the alternative housing option called a floating home. The combination of a technology marketed as sustainable while surrounding a valued cultural symbol, such as water, is not based on the environmental agenda, but for the public policy makers to gain power over an elite target market by using a specific marketing power.</p><p> With the lack of change throughout the Dutch government and culture, there has to be a question of whether this new technology has been introduced as a chance to develop a new social construct within the targeted elite class. In order to better distinguish this answer, thematic interviews were set up to sort out key themes that would help generalize the true meaning of these floating homes. With key points developed from experts in the field, it helped understand analyzation of specific case studies. The results of both interviews and case studies were then blanketed by a theory based on culture, knowledge, and power. The basis of the conclusion is that the floating homes were not necessarily developed for sustainable use like they were advertised for, but were developed to create profits and societal change to gain governmental power that the Netherlands once lacked.</p><p>