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Living Environment

Turn your address into a map of your surroundings: who decides, what is happening, and what you can do about it — from your house to the country.

documentation in four layers · leefomgeving.swarp.nl · Leiden, 12 Sept 2026

This is not a flat manual but documentation in four layers, for four readers: whoever uses it, whoever wants to grasp the idea, whoever builds it, and whoever wants to go further. Each layer carries a label saying how long it lasts.

enduringOutlives a rebuild — the idea, the model, the choices.
tracks the codeDescribes how it is built right now — routes, sources, screens. This can age.

Layer 1 — for the user1What you do with it tracks the code

You enter a postcode and house number; the app derives a ladder from it — house, neighbourhood, district, town, municipality, region, province, country — and fills each rung with who represents you, which decisions are taken, what news and public notices there are, and what step you can take. Without an account: give a postcode and you immediately see a trial ladder.

  • houseYour address — the building and coordinates (PDOK, BAG).
  • nbhd · districtThe figures close by — population, proximity, road safety.
  • townWhat is going on — local news, public notices, roadworks.
  • municipalityThe richest rung — the council, the parties, the decisions, the forum, "what you can do".
  • region · prov.The region — the government above the municipality (being built).
  • countryThe national agenda — what is on the docket in parliament.

And you take part: report a civic case and follow it (the app watches the statutory deadlines); keep your circle under life course (loved ones, needs, tasks); join the conversation on the forum (per municipality, shared with Support); and set your search rule under politics, so your themes come to the top. Two lenses — a spiritual and a cultural profile — show your blueprint as a story and as a community.

Layer 2 — for the thinker2The idea & the philosophy enduring

SWARP is a bottom-up citizen system: the goal is that you know what is happening locally and can find the people around you. Living Environment is the map for that.

The founding thought is that democracy begins at the place where you live, not at the country. So the app reverses the usual order: not "pick a municipality from a list", but "give your address, and the surroundings unfold as a ladder of scales". Each rung has its own government and its own sources, and on every rung the same question holds — who decides here, what has been decided, and what can I do about it?

The second choice is honesty about coverage. Where a national source is silent, a rung stays empty rather than being filled with guesswork. An empty cell is a marked gap, not a fault — exactly as an empty address in the MAZE is an open question. This is how the map invites local sources to fill what the national ones do not reach.

Layer 3 — for the builder3How it works — sources, API & gaps

The sources — it invents nothing enduring

Every rung is filled from public, verifiable sources; the backbone is PDOK + the BAG for address and location. That "no guesswork, only sources" principle is enduring; which sources are added moves. Currently, among others:

  • CBS (district/neighbourhood figures, proximity, crime), KOOP & local regulations (CVDR) via SRU.
  • Open Council Information (parties), Parliament OData (national agenda).
  • NDW (roadworks), OpenStreetMap (amenities), TenderNed (procurement), DSO/Environment Act.
  • RIVM (air), KNMI (weather & seismology), Rijkswaterstaat (water), police, PBL & Eurostat (for the monitor).
  • Local news (RSS + curated feeds) and the election manifestos of sixteen parties.

The API tracks the code

get /api/proef/:pc4
Trial ladder without login: place names, signals, road safety.
get /api/plek/signalen
The public signals for a place.
get /api/kwesties/:gemeente
The publicly reported civic cases of a municipality.
get /api/monitor
The living-environment measurement per scale, with the health of the gate.
post /api/partner/signalen
The Signal Gate: a partner supplies signals with its own key (X-Partner-Sleutel). Contract partners only.

The app has more internal routes than shown here; these are the public ones and the partner gate. The app shares its database, login and forum with its sister services — one account across the family.

What is still being built — honestly tracks the code

  • Council members as people (writing to them) — no national source yet.
  • Provincial decisions not yet connected; region/province partly empty.
  • Coverage is uneven: not every district has CBS figures; not every municipality publishes council information. The coverage page shows per source what exists.