Participatory SWOT-analysis for the spatial impact study Railway Zone Breda - a case study

This paper on the spatial impact study Railway Zone Breda describes a participatory SWOT-analysis for assessing the impact of a large scale innercity infrastructural project on adjacent residential neighborhoods in which residents and other stakeholders, policy officials of the municipality of Breda and researchers participated. This large infrastructural project includes the transformation of the present railway station into a shuttle station for the high speed train Amsterdam – Paris. The redevelopment of the Breda railway station will have undeniable impacts on the adjacent neighborhoods Belcrum and Spoorbuurt. For this reason the municipality of Breda decided to let the stakeholders in the neighbourhoods participate in the impact analysis. In the research process the emphasis was directed to the question what impacts the renewal could have for these neighborhoods. The inhabitants and businesses of those neighborhoods were divided in their opinions and expectations. Some of them mainly saw the positive side - they expected to gain by the new situation - but others stressed the potential dangers of the intended project, pointing at. Hence, the main research objectives were 1) to identify and analyze the current strengths and weaknesses of the neighborhoods, 2) to foresee / estimate the potential impacts of the large infrastructural transformation and the transformation (building) process on the adjacent neighborhoods, and 3) to identify the actions were needed to maximze the positive effects and minimize the negatieve effects. This case study narrates on a participatory policy analysis process (cf. Geurts & Mayer, 1996; Mayer, 1997) in which knowledge generation, exchange and application by the stakeholders mentioned, is combined with expert and practitioner’s knowledge to generate new insights (situated cognition, cf. Bredo, 1994) with a focus on future implementation on behalf of the policy making process that takes place in a local community network.

Knowledge and perceptions in participatory policy processes: lessons from the delta-region in the Netherlands

Water resources management issues tend to affect a variety of uses and users. Therefore, they often exhibit complex and unstructured problems. The complex, unstructured nature of these problems originates from uncertain knowledge and from the existence of divergent perceptions among various actors. Consequently, dealing with these problems is not just a knowledge problem; it is a problem of ambiguity too. This paper focuses on a complex, unstructured water resources management issue, the sustainable development—for ecology, economy and society—of the Delta-region of the Netherlands. In several areas in this region the ecological quality decreased due to hydraulic constructions for storm water safety, the Delta Works. To improve the ecological quality, the Dutch government regards the re-establishment of estuarine dynamics in the area as the most important solution. However, re-establishment of estuarine dynamics will affect other uses and other users. Among the affected users are farmers in the surrounding areas, who use freshwater from a lake for agricultural purposes. This problem has been addressed in a participatory decision-making process, which is used as a case study in this paper. We investigate how the dynamics in actors’ perceptions and the knowledge base contribute to the development of agreed upon and valid knowledge about the problem–solution combination, using our conceptual framework for problem structuring. We found that different knowledge sources—expert and practical knowledge—should be integrated to create a context-specific knowledge base, which is scientifically valid and socially robust. Furthermore, we conclude that for the convergence of actors’ perceptions, it is essential that actors learn about the content of the process (cognitive learning) and about the network in which they are involved (strategic learning). Our findings form a plea for practitioners in water resources management to adopt a problem structuring approach in order to deal explicitly with uncertainty and ambiguity