%0 Thesis
%9 Bachelor
%A Steenbergen, Julian
%D 2022
%F theses_frw:3924
%P 39
%T Citizen participation throughout different phases of infrastructure projects
%U https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/3924/
%X This exploratory research aimed at investigating the relationship between citizen participation and its consistency in infrastructure projects. Existing literature is written about citizen participation in relation to infrastructure projects, but the part about consistency is often missing. This study, therefore, tried to fill this gap by researching this relationship. To enrich the findings, this study included a case-study of ‘Aanpak Ring Zuid’ in the city of Groningen, The Netherlands. This is a large-scale infrastructure project that is relevant to this study, as it has a long time span and construction largely takes place right in front of the doors of local citizens. This means citizen participation and correct involvement requires proper techniques and approaches. Therefore, this study entails a qualitative method where interviews were held with three experts employed under the organisation of ‘Aanpak Ring Zuid’. The interviewees gave interesting insights into the field of citizen participation consistency regarding infrastructure projects. Participation techniques like plenary presentation sessions, walk-in evenings, local committee meetings, newsletters, a website and opening a pavilion appeared to be most valuable. The level of citizen participation, though, was not the same across all project phases. There was a lack of information and engagement during the second participation phase. This concludes that different techniques are relevant for different phases of a project, since each stage requires a specific approach. However, the interviewees gave a set of solutions to the problems they faced during the years of active participation, as well as the years were there seemed to be a lack of participation. Although many fruitful conclusions can be drawn from this research, more investigation is needed to further uncover the relationship between citizen participation and consistency among infrastructure projects.