Behavioural Studies in Spatial Planning

Abstract

The main strategic planning policy in Flanders has in view to reduce the growth of the net settlement area. It is important to enthuse people to live closer together in the centres of villages, towns or in more dense urban areas to preserve open areas. The question is how to achieve this.In the last few years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of convincing citizens to change their behaviour voluntarily. A crucial question is which behavioural change we can expect from the population, whether this can be met at once by everyone and what a government has to change or needs to provide to make the change possible. In recent years, the Flemish Planning Bureau for the Environment and Spatial Development commissioned several behavioural studies, conducted by Endeavour. It concerns two studies carried out on compact housing, on travel behaviour, on choice of residence in relation to facilities, and a new study on the behavioural influencers of housing. Thanks to an approach that combines the fields of architecture, urban planning, sociology and design Endeavour created a methodology of participation and co-creation with citizens, aiming at different segmentations of the population. This method successfully brought a multitude of experiences to the surface by means of a variety of people who sufficiently represent the diversity in Flanders. Insights into attitudes and motivations of a broad public are the key to understanding how to change certain aspects of behaviour into something more sustainable. This paper focuses on two themes. The first reflects on practices, tools and knowledge that are nowadays common in (regional) spatial planning and how they relate to human behaviour. The second introduces insights from qualitative research for behavioural change that focuses on how to approach different target groups within the population. The aim is to guide behaviour in function of an inclusive and sustainable spatial transition. As the paper shows, it is important that in this transition process people do not get the feeling of 'losing' something. such as comfort or choice