Experts as Game Changers? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Climate Measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam

Experts as Game Changers? A Critical Discourse Analysis of Climate Measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam

Herdt, T. (TU Delft Urban Design; Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences)
Muñoz Sanz, V. (TU Delft Urban Design)

2023

This article analyzes the acceptance of climate policy measures in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam to understand how policy and planning interrelate with private and public interests. While legitimizing climate policy and measures, values can also cause conflict when operationalized locally. By analyzing value conflicts in public discourse, we gain insights into questions of environmental behavior and their influence on the acceptance of climate action. We report on quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis covering 410 articles from Dutch newspapers between 2015 and 2021 in the Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam related to the energy transition, mobility, and urban greening. Our findings show that public discourse mostly remains abstract and detached from local contexts. As experts and politicians dominate the debate, the discourse mainly addresses science- and policy-related arguments, representing the public interest but reflecting only insufficiently private interests and the local (re-)distribution of benefits and burdens. Therefore, we attribute spontaneous protest to the lack of reference to differentiated values at the local level and find the argument of NIMBYism insufficient to explain residents’ opposition. Instead, our findings point to experts’ and decision-makers’ lack of recognition of the local “idea of place” and a community’s identity as an explanation for the sudden emergence of protests. Here, urban design may bridge the gap between policy and planning by translating technical and economic constraints into place-specific designs.

climate change adaptation
climate change mitigation
critical discourse analysis
environmental behavior
identity of place
public acceptability
urban design
urban planning
values

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:fc3077c4-8596-4634-a419-4316a0ba2d42

https://doi.org/10.17645/up.v8i2.6413

2183-7635

Urban Planning, 8 (2), 307-321

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2023 T. Herdt, V. Muñoz Sanz