Local Referendums for Urban Area Development

Local Referendums for Urban Area Development: How public value conflicts contribute to the design and decision-making

den Hartog, Tessa (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Ersoy, A. (mentor)
Hobma, Fred (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences | Management in the Built Environment

2023-11-09

Local referendums are part of the local democracy and give citizens more direct discission power by their votes.The instrument can be used by the citizens to express their resistance towards the municipal plans or used by the municipality to consult their citizens about their plans. In the Netherlands, local referendums are despite their non-binding character still used nowadays. This instrument is also used for Urban Area Development plans, such as Amsterdam IJburg (1997) whereby citizens and special interest groups were concerned about the loss of nature in the area due to the large-scale land reclamation project. Another example is Arnhem Stadsblokken-Meinerswijk (2016), whereby a group of citizens expressed their concerns about building in the floodplains after the national policy ‘ruimte voor de rivier’ was introduced to make more space for the river instead of building in these areas. Until now, studies have been done about local referendums in general, the topics, about voting behaviour and the frequency of it. In addition, some research has been done on local referendums in urban development areas in Europe and America. However, studies about the added value of a local referendum in the Netherlands specifically about Urban Area Developments are missing. The report answers the following research question: How can a local referendum for urban area development contribute to the design and decision-making? The goal of the research is to gain a better understanding of the added value of a local referendum used for larger urban area development topics and how this influences design and decision-making. The research question will be answered by a literature review and the use of qualitative data, including interviews and archive documents on the case studies of IJburg and Stadsblokken-Meinerswijk. The research output is a list of recommendations for municipalities, on how the local referendum process can be improved specifically for UAD topics. The added value of local referendums for urban area development topics is mainly the contribution to legitimate decision-making. Also, citizens have more decision power next to the regular voting moments. In addition, the arguments on how this plan will support the city become clearer. Besides, the counter arguments and doubts about the plan are better heard than without a referendum. This research shows that conflicting public values, such as environmental values and development values, can by using a referendum create more awareness and could even turn into a positive outcome. However, from the analysis of the interviews, it became clear that there is a desire for an alternative form of referendums for UAD due to its more complex character wherein many interests are involved. The recommendations are mainly focused on the implementation of communication in the process. A participation process included in the referendum process is regarded as an essential part for municipalities and citizens to produce a coherent and feasible solution. This could even avoid conflict and thus corrective referendums.

Local Referendum
Urban Area Development
Design Change
Decision Making
Public Values
Public Value conflict
Nature

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5f87aca6-7966-4e12-92ea-cd4652fe929f

51.98019110381755,5.891367844090252

Student theses

master thesis

© 2023 Tessa den Hartog