The Environment and Planning Act (EPA) places a strong emphasis on citizen and stakeholder participation in area developments. Developers are encouraged, and in some cases required, to organize participation efforts prior to applying for permits or zoning changes. However, due to the EPA’s deliberately flexible framework, many developers face uncertainty in meeting participation expectations. In response, they are exploring and optimizing new methods. One such initiative is Kijk op de Wijk (KodW), a market-based participation tool that leverages digital means. The practical use of digital tools in participation processes remains relatively underexplored, this study investigates the following question: How can developers use Kijk op de Wijk as a Private Organised Participation in area developments under the Environment and Planning Act?
The research adopts a qualitative approach, combining literature and document review with interviews, a case study on the development project The Kaai, and validation through an expert panel. The findings suggest that KodW holds conceptual potential as a POP method, particularly in its ability to reach a wide audience through digital platforms. However, practical challenges persist, including the need for better internal integration and strategic deployment. Aligning expectations among stakeholders and establishing a clear plan that combines both physical and digital tools is essential for successful implementation.
This thesis offers concrete recommendations for enhancing KodW so that it can be more easily integrated into the development process and more closely aligned with EPA requirements. Ultimately, such improvements can make participation more accessible for developers and help shift it from a legal obligation to a valuable standard practice.

In recent years, there has been a notable shift towards increased citizen participation in society, both globally and within the Netherlands. Concurrently, urban development has undergone a notable shift towards a more private-led orientation over the decades. This shift is evident in the expanding responsibilities of the private sector, particularly project developers, which now extend beyond traditional boundaries. One manifestation of this transformation is the increasing organization of citizen participation by private developers, referred to as private-led participation, highlighted by the new Environmental and Planning Act implemented in January 2024. As responsibilities evolve and the lines between the public and private sectors blur, there is a noticeable convergence of objectives and actions. This growing interdependence in private-led participation processes calls for greater collaboration across organizational boundaries between developers and municipalities. Despite these developments, limited academic research and practical tools address the evolving roles of public and private actors and their collaboration in private-led participation processes. Therefore, this study aims to explore the changing roles of private developers and municipalities in private-led citizen participation processes. Specifically, it seeks to investigate how these stakeholders can collaborate to facilitate private-led citizen participation. The primary method for this study will be qualitative research, involving a comprehensive literature review and multiple case studies within the Municipality of Amsterdam. This approach will include document analysis along with in-depth interviews with developers and municipalities. The study aims to provide practical recommendations for enhancing collaboration between private developers and municipalities in the context of shifting roles, ultimately facilitating private-led participation processes. The research concludes that with developers increasingly taking the lead in managing private-led participation processes, municipalities remain crucial roles in setting the stage, providing guidance, and offering strategic oversight. Collaboration between the two requires separate but also shared responsibilities, clear role definitions, early engagement, transparent communication, clear preconditions and capacity building to ensure private-led citizen participation.

The importance of climate change is getting increasingly more attention from all stakeholders in urban development. This results in the energy network operator being increasingly involved in the partnerships needed to realize new urban area development projects. Current projects have been experiencing delays due to the electricity grid not being able to comply with the new increased energy needs. The energy network operator is not used to intensively collaborate in urban development projects. This results in collaboration barriers, resulting in hold-up problems in urban development projects. The ‘boundary spanners’ (the people operating at the boundaries of their organization) experience these collaboration barriers with other stakeholders. With the use of interviews and questionnaires, the experienced collaboration barriers will be identified with the use of the Delphi method. This will enable the prioritization of time and resources. Combined with practical recommendations, the problem of energy network congestion can hopefully be tackled.

Introduction, Scope and Aim:
The objective of this research is to examine the influence of municipal spatial vision documents on the decision-making process of developers to participate in urban area developments. For this research a literature and case study as well as an expert meeting were used. With the case study methodology four urban area developments in the Netherlands were studied and included a desk research regarding the vision documents published and interviews with developers regarding their views of these documents and their reasons to invest. The results from the case studies were analysed and validated through an expert meeting.

Main results:
This research concluded that spatial policy documents play a crucial role in the urban development process since they create a first framework for the development. However, it was also noted that these documents can be unrealistic and fail to effectively persuade developers due to not considering the financial aspect of the development. It was furthermore concluded that these documents are important for the decision-making process of developers, as it is political statement from the municipality that it endorses housing development in a certain area. Developers furthermore look for clues in vision documents on what could be built since this greatly determines their development business case. However, such clues are of lacking in these documents and are therefore described by developers as vague. Furthermore, developers desire a balance of flexibility and certainty in spatial vision documents and the area development process. The internal decision-making process of developers regarding participation in an area development consists of creating a business case and conducting a risk analysis of the development, which are combined into an investment proposal. The decision whether to invest is not solely based on the business case being profitable and line with the internal goals of the developer, but also on having the 'belief' the development can be realised, which is based on the risk analysis as well as the developer's (gut) feeling about the development.

Main conclusion and recommendations:
Based on this research, it can be concluded that ultimately many factors influence the decision-making process of developers. Spatial vision documents contribute to this decision, but there is no direct cause-effect since other factors are also in play. Crucial are the shaping factors indicating what could be built that can be derived from the spatial vision document. Moreover, capacity building factors related to the reputation of and relationship with the municipality play a crucial role. These factors influence the 'belief' of a developer for successful area development. Additionally, factors related to developers' internal goals and modus operandi have a crucial impact on their decision of where to invest. It can be concluded that it is crucial that parties collaborate early in the process, that their relationship is good and, importantly, that there is mutual trust.

Summarising, spatial vision documents, shaping instruments and capacity building tools are an important influence on the decision-making process of developers, but internal and external factors play an at least equally important role.

The urban challenges of today are plentiful. A million houses need to be built in the next decade, urban development needs to allow for climate adaptation and contribute to the energy transition. It needs to ensure sustainable economic growth potential in a circular and social economic fashion. The active forms of land policy that where standard to the Dutch government prior to the economic crisis of 2008 however are no longer applied in the same level of frequency. Neo-liberal influences have over time shifted the top-down government-led planning approach, to one where private parties need to be incited if there are particular planning questions to be solved. Yet, even when confronted with fragmented land ownership, or the necessity of integrating non-economic-efficient development functions, through facilitative forms of land policy, the government still has a task to shape the environment. Achieving the urban ambitions above is very costly, especially when integrative development is necessary; and without active forms of land policy or heavy forms of public private partnerships, the government can no longer mobilize the incomes gained from land management. According to former studies, it is possible to achieve integrative added value in urban development where private law agreements embody the value capturing arrangements. Little to no study has yet been conducted into how such agreements can do so in the Dutch institutional context, for which reason this thesis has addressed this apparent literature gap through the following research question: How can public parties increase the potential of their value capturing strategies within facilitative land policy using private law agreements in projects of area redevelopment? Through an explorative case study approach, initial lessons -rooted in empirical data- are drawn and abductively translated to formulate more tangible insights. The end product therein is the proposition of an initial theoretical understanding, and to present what Glaser and Strauss would call a ‘running discussion’.

Value capturing within facilitative land policy in a technical sense takes places through agreed-to contributions in the anterior agreement, be they monetary or in-kind. From both literature as well as the case studies conducted it becomes apparent that it is the process preluding the actual agreement that makes possible more integrative forms of value capturing, through for example negotiation or a market-oriented redesign of the anterior process. These more integrative forms however are not necessarily to be understood in a solely financial sense. This thesis proposes to couple the concept of value capturing with the policy mode in the new actionable definition ‘facilitative value capturing*’, and to therethrough see value capturing within a facilitative context as an active exercise of attaining public spatial policy objectives. In conclusion this study proposes to use the definition of facilitative value capturing as a starting point, from the contention that even when public parties cannot or will not take a more risk-bearing role to the development, they still ought to take a proactive role towards achieving their spatial objectives, as they have an inherent responsibility to shape the environment, and facilitative therein needn’t equal laissez faire.

*Facilitative value capturing: "Maximising the way in which the area development contributes to public spatial policy objectives through (synergetic) negotiations, transfer of operational risks or anterior process design."

To attain a transition such as to a circular economy and built environment, actions at all scales are necessary, which implies that interventions should positively contribute to the transition (Petersen& Heurkens, 2018). Governments see the problems that the linear built environment entails and are making steps in implementing circular focussed policies (Bouwma et. al, 2015). A transition, such as to a circular built environment, can only become reality when public planners work in a certain way. They should use their political power with the dynamics of real estate developments by shaping,
regulating and stimulating market parties (Petersen & Heurkens, 2015). One of the new planning instruments concerning circularity are circular land tender procedures (OECD, 2020). By setting circular award criteria for land tenders, public planners ensure that they have an influence on real estate developments. Since this is a new phenomenon, almost no research has been done into this planning instrument. It is unclear whether the introduction of circular criteria raises problems and what the parties involved think about it. Heurkens et. al (2015) identifies the importance of cooperation between public and private entities. Public planners are increasingly dependent on market parties to achieve their goals. Therefore, it is important to conduct research on this new planning tool.

Public services are an essential part of urban development projects. Usually, municipalities aim to recover the costs of these services from developers that initiate projects that benefit from these services. Many countries have implemented various value capturing instruments to be able to achieve this. However, only fragmented data is available about the use of financial contributions from developers in practice. This study focuses on the situation in the Netherlands and researches whether negotiated financial contributions are mentioned in municipal policy reports and if these are incorporated in development agreements. The research provides insight into the use of financial contributions and the results of its usage in practice. Although the legislation in the Spatial Planning Act on cost recovery is extensive, the practice of recovering above-plan costs is messy. Different types of above-plan costs are used inconsistently and interchangeably in various municipal policies. The policy analysis conducted for 50 municipalities shows that only few municipalities have stated a cost allocation for financial contributions and indicated explicit contribution sums. Municipalities can have different approaches towards the allocation of costs for off-site works, whereby some policies are more detailed than others. The contributions for above-plan costs that are mentioned have a broad bandwidth, in height and type of investments. With case studies, the implementation of these policies is analysed. The research shows that financial contributions are an important topic in negotiations in some municipalities, while others barely negotiate on it and incorporate the stated contributions from their policy in almost all development agreements. Municipalities are willing to lower contributions if developers can show their project becomes infeasible by them. It then depends on project characteristics if contributions or lowered or weaved entirely. Most municipalities do not expect that the new Environment and Planning Act, which introduces publicly enforceable financial contributions, will result in more received contributions, although they think the new legislation could potentially improve their negotiation position. This research has provided an overview of how municipalities deal with financial contributions in practice and has thereby contributed to the knowledge on the implementation of cost recovery policies in the Dutch context.

The Netherlands is well-known for their long-standing tradition in spatial planning and growth management. Before the crisis of 2008, the municipalities carried out an active land policy in urban development projects, however this approach was not crisis-proof and is subject of change contemporarily. The new Environment and Planning Act expected to enter in force in 2022 plays a significant role in this. There is an ongoing transition from traditional into a more facilitating approach to urban development projects initiated from the government. This new approach offers room for initiatives from the market. However, it is not clear what the impact of these changes are and what it entails. The aim of this research is to clarify the framework of this facilitative approach and what it entails for the municipalities and project developers. In order to investigate this a literature review has been made in which the most important informal and formal procedures, instruments and documents have been described. The design of this research is qualitative. Based on document analysis, semi-structured interviews and multiple case studies a complete overview of the transition is given. This results in the definition of the context of urban development projects, legal and non-legal instruments used, practical experiences and relationship between parties involved. The goal is to map out the entire situation in the present and near future, which could be used as a guidance when the new Environment and Planning Law comes into effect.

The Netherlands has a wide range of partnerships in urban area (re)development, which differ greatly from one another and can be deployed depending on the local situation, scope, parties involved and state of the economy. Over the past decades, these models have grown and been evaluated within the context of rapidly changing social planning development, with the government increasingly leaving implementation to the market. As a result, private parties have built up considerable land positions in the expectation of being able to realize them in the long term. Land ownership provides a significant dominant position, given that the landowner has the right to (re)develop. When there are several landowners, this fragmented land ownership can be an important barrier to urban area redevelopment. Before the economic crisis, many areas were transformed by being all properties of one party. The development rights model and the joint venture model were often used to solve the problem of fragmented ownership. Both models require a large capital requirement from the initiators of transformation, as in both cases all land (and buildings) have to be acquired in the plan area (Hobma, Heurkens, & van der Wal, 2019). Since the crisis, the acquisition of land and buildings for transformation has been approached differently. A possible strategy applied in urban area redevelopment with fragmented ownership is: Developing Apart Together (DAT). The partnership DAT offers both public and private parties the opportunity to retain land for area redevelopment. In which the initiating party sets out a vision for the redevelopment of an area, but does not ending up by owning the area. Surprisingly little information is available about the partnership DAT. What can be found is limited exclusively to vague definitions. Therefore, the aim of this research is to provide insight into the experiences of public and private parties with the DAT partnership This includes providing insight into the relationship and agreements made between the two parties. It also provides insight into how the parties can fulfil both the area redevelopment project and deal with fragmented ownership. This is done by answering the following main question: “What insights does an initial study of the start-up phase of developing apart together (DAT) provide?”. Two research methods were central to this research. The study started with a literature review and followed by an empirical research. From the literature it can be concluded that the insights concerning DAT are limited. As far as the characteristics are concerned, DAT is described in the literature as a public-private partnership in which a common general vision has been drawn up. There is no strong governance structure and land transactions are limited. The literature also shows that within a DAT model there is an area organisation that takes care of issues that cross plots. In practice, these characteristics are partly similar, but other issues are also specifically mentioned. The shared vision and/or desire to transform corresponds with the literature. On the other hand, the use of anterior agreements is often mentioned and turns out to be an important part of the financial and legal agreements within a DAT model and something that is not mentioned in the literature. Another thing that is not mentioned in the literature either, but which emerges several times in practice, is the number of agreements made for social facilities. Literature and practice correspond well with regard to the conditions for applying a DAT. From the literature it became clear that these are transformation areas with fragmented ownership. In other words, there are many different owners present in the area. This is confirmed in practice. It is emphasised in the literature that the public and private parties form a coalition of the willing. This is not mentioned in practice. In terms of variants, literature and practice also correspond. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned here that DAT is still at a too early stage to be able to conclude whether there are actually different variants and where they differ and/or correspond. In both literature and practice the pace at which area developments are progressing is described as low. Because many parties are involved within such area developments with different ambitions and interests, plans are less likely to get off the ground. This is also recognized in practice as an important barrier. In the literature, non-cooperating parties are seen as an obstacle. This is not specifically mentioned in practice. In practice, however, the distrust towards the public parties is mentioned. Municipalities do not seem to have confidence because they often fail to keep their agreements. Finally, the difference in knowledge in which this cooperation is based is named as an obstacle by the many different parties.

In transformation projects the land-use needs to be changed. Developers must therefore apply for a change in the land-use plan or environmental permit to deviate from the land-use plan. Municipalities set all kinds off requirements for planning participation, these requirements can jeopardise the feasibility of the transformation plan. The project-specific requirements are in that case the one that can be most problematic to the projects. In that case, developers can optimise the project in order to make them more feasible. This can be done by going back to the negotiation table with the municipality and try to refute requirements. Financially optimising the project is in this case not the best solution. A recommendation is for developers to make a negotiation strategy and focus on building a good relation with the municipality.

The challenges that urban area developments are facing are becoming more and more complex. Additionally, these developments often come along with major uncertainties, risks, and unknowns regarding the end-results. This has resulted in the publication of several documents in the past few years pointing out that the current tender system may not always provide for the most optimal urban area developments - calling for more efficient, flexible and quality oriented tender procedures. More specifically, the partner-selection method, which is a new phenomenon, has been introduced in practice. Many professionals say that this new method could be the answer to the rising complexities in urban area developments. The aim of this research is therefore to explore its potential and its credibility. More importantly, the goal of this research is to design a partner-selection process that is robust and trustworthy through organising it in such way that it accommodates for the formation and continuation of successful partnerships. The main research question of this graduation research is therefore: ‘How can a partner-selection process be designed so that it enables the formation and continuation of successful partnerships in municipal land developments’ To answer this question, literature studies were carried out in order to 1) obtain knowledge on the newly introduced partner-selection process and its ingredients, and 2) to map the success factors that lead to successful partnerships. Three case studies were then explored through conducting semi-structured interviews in order to 1) obtain further knowledge on the partner selection process, 2) to enrich the current knowledge on the mapped success factors, and 3) to tailer the most important success factors specifically to the partner-selection process and to obtain an understanding on how the success factors can be organised specifically in the partner selection process. The information obtained from the empirical studies was then used to design an event based partner-selection process model.

This process model is a proposal which presents and illustrates an example of how a partner-selection process could be designed and organised. It is specifically directed at municipalities, but could of course be used by other parties to obtain a further understanding on what the partner-selection methods entails. Furthermore, all municipal land developments are different, meaning that each project requires a customised process. The events and elements of the proposal can therefore be moved around until seen as fit. All in all, the proposal serves as a tool to guide municipalities when setting up a partner-selection process.

The Dutch institutional system for urban development has traditionally been known for its implementation of active land policy by municipalities. This is an approach to land development that includes a municipality acquiring land, servicing it with infrastructure and public amenities and disposing it to a real estate developer, in which the value increase of the land through its development in principal should cover the costs of the operation. In recent times, critical remarks about this way of approaching land development have increasingly occurred, especially since Dutch municipalities lost considerable amounts of money due to investments in land during the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. After this, the collective idea seemed to be that municipalities had to get rid of this way of land development, adopting merely passive land policies. However, as it turns out municipalities have not abandoned the active land policy at all. This research aims at unraveling the characteristics and specifics of land policies and at finding out how municipalities decide on which type to apply. Through a literature review, the spectrum of different land policies is researched, after which an empirical research is done through case studies of eight municipalities to find out how the process of choosing and implementing a land policy in Dutch municipalities currently works. In the end, the lessons from practice will be compared to the existing literature, and a recommendation on how to treat land policy within municipalities will be done.

The Dutch housing market is currently dealing with a significant dwelling deficit, which results in the need to accelerate the development of large quantities of dwellings in the urban areas. This thesis studies the redevelopment of inner-city industrial sites into mixed work-residential areas, especially focussing on the collaboration process between the municipality, landowner-users and project developers in the initiation phase. A Q-methodology research is conducted to identify which empirical perspectives exist on which factors are important when accelerating the collaboration process. Twenty-eight respondents from municipalities, landowner-users and project developers from three Dutch redevelopment projects have been used for this research. The main research findings are:
- The identification of four distinctive empirical perspectives on which organisational, process and instrument factors need to be incorporated into the collaboration process to accelerate it.
- The insight into the determinants that show which type of parties have which perspective and in which type of cases which perspectives are likely to occur.
- Practical recommendations to design the collaboration process in a way that its acceleration potential is enlarged.
- The assembly of the building block approach conceptual model that uses the insights in the perspectives and the determinants to construct a case specific collaboration approach.
By designing the collaboration process according to the preferences of the involved parties, expressed by the four perspectives, the parties are more committed to the process which results in a more effective and therefore faster initiation phase. Eventually this can help to accelerate the construction of the needed dwellings.
So, you have to collaborate to accelerate.

Background:
This report is the graduation report of Sarah Heemskerk for the master Management in the Built Environment at the TU Delft. The research is done into the difference of leadership styles of project managers in real estate projects when the contract type differs. Integrated contracts are seen more and more often in the real estate sector and that raises questions about the work of the project manager. This research gives the first view on differences in applied leadership styles when this relatively new contract type is compared with the traditional contract type.

Methods:
For this research the leadership style of project managers is measured on the base of seven competencies: vision and imagination, strategic perspective, engaging communication, empowering, self-awareness, emotional resilience and influencing. A self-assessment questionnaire has been developed based on the LDQ of Dulewicz and Higgs (2005), since the LDQ was not available to use. The questionnaire consist of two parts: general and project-based. The scores on the competencies are used to define the applied leadership style of project managers in situations with different contract types.

Results:
54 project managers participated in the research and filled out the questionnaire. The sample was largely male, had a long experience as project manager and worked in the public real estate sector. The participants themselves did expect a difference in leadership style when other contract types are concerned.

Conclusion:
While the results show little statistical differences, there is still enough reason to take conclusions from the results. The project managers in general do not show large differences on the score of the competencies, but there are differences visible in the project-based score for different contract types. The emotional competencies and vision and imagination have a higher score when integrated contracts are used. Strategic perspective has a lower score when integrated contracts are used. For traditional contracts there is a bias towards a goal-oriented leadership style, while for integrated contracts there is a bias towards an engaging leadership style.