What values are prioritised in the development of a railway station and its urban surroundings?
A Text-analysis to research the differences between four Western European countries
G.W. Aben (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
Wijnand Veeneman – Mentor (TU Delft - Organisation & Governance)
M. Triggianese – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Building Knowledge)
S.D. Ropers – Mentor (TU Delft - Organisation & Governance)
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Abstract
Railway stations are no longer mere transport nodes; they function as complex urban places where mobility, design, land use, commercial activity, and political legitimacy converge. Building on a perspectives framework synthesised from the literature, this paper quantifies cross-country differences in the value priorities embedded in official planning and project documents for station areas in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We construct multilingual, perspective-specific dictionaries (EN/NL/DE) and apply dictionary-based coding to large corpora of available documents. Robustness checks include outlier cleaning and a comparability subset of station masterplans. Results indicate distinctive national profiles: for example, stronger emphases on process/legitimacy and rail-technical concerns in Germany; design, connectivity, and growth in the Netherlands; accessibility/connection priorities in Switzerland; and a focus on financial values in the UK. We discuss institutional interpretations and limitations of dictionary methods, and we outline implications for planning practice and future analytic refinements.