Citizen participation in the Netherlands : motives to involve citizens in planning processes

Abstract

Many post-war areas in Europe are suffering from diverse physical, economic and social problems, such as bad housing quality, high numbers of joblessness and declining levels of social cohesion. This holds especially for large housing estates. To counteract this development, policymakers and stakeholders have joined hands. Most of these actors subscribe to the idea that not only physical, but also social and economic solutions are needed. Involving citizens in local policymaking is believed to be of major importance here, not only because citizen participation can enhance social cohesion, but also because residents are regarded as ‘experts’ of the neighbourhood who can provide valuable information to the policymakers. Although most policymakers and stakeholders agree on the importance of citizen participation, there is no general agreement on the question how to shape the structure of citizen participation, nor is there a general answer to the question to what extent citizens should be involved. In this paper, the influence of governance structures on levels of citizen participation will be investigated. This will be done by linking different stages in a planning process to the observed levels of citizen participation. Central in this paper are the motives of policymakers and stakeholders. These motives are derived from interviews with professionals who are related to planning processes in three post-war areas in the Netherlands: Bouwlust in The Hague, Nieuw- Hoograven in Utrecht and Liendert in Amersfoort. The so-called Big Cities Policy targets all these neighbourhoods; an integrative policy that aims to improve deteriorated urban neighbourhoods in the country’s 30 largest cities.