ABSTRACT
At the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s unemployment in the Nijmegen region had increased to 25 percent. The different aspects of unemployment interact with the personal and situational characteristics of the individual in bringing about changes in leisure activity patterns. Some of these factors are: life cycle phase, socioeconomic position, duration of unemployment, and the living situation in an urban setting. The Dutch urban system consists of a large proportion of medium-sized cities and a relatively small number of primary cities. For the city of Nijmegen the sample was selected from registered unemployed people in four districts. Nijmegen is a middle-sized town in the eastern part of the Netherlands with nearly 150,000 inhabitants, surrounded by river, lowlands, woodlands, and hills. Also striking was the frequency with which visits to the Nijmegen waterfront alongside the river Waal were mentioned.
