| dc.description.abstract | Citizen participation has been a highly debated topic in the past years. Organized society has
changed through globalisation and the rise of information- and communication technologies.
Traditional institutions and governments seem to lose ground, because citizens start to lose
trust in the representative democracy. This is what Castells (1996) calls ‘the crisis of democracy’
inside the so-called network society. In their search to regain legitimacy, (local) governments
promote active citizenship and increasingly implement citizen participation (Yetano et al.,
2009). Another visible trend is the growing focus on locality. Municipalities in the Netherlands
have partly decentralized their power to the level of the neighbourhood. The so-called
neighbourhood focus (wijkgerichte werken) is implemented in most of the Dutch cities with the
goal to enhance citizen participation. However, already in 1977, the Chinese geographer Tuan
thought that the concept of a neighbourhood is too abstract for citizens to feel connected with it.
In more recent research on place attachment, Hidalgo and Hernandez (2001) and later Lewicka
(2010) found that citizens indeed feel less attached to their neighbourhood, then to the spatial
level of their street or city. It is therefore questionable whether the focus on neighbourhoods for
the promotion of citizen participation is effective.
This research aims to explore the different opinions on citizen participation and the role of
spatial scale. By means of a qualitative study an answer is given to the following research
question:
Which motives and opinions play a role within Dutch municipalities when deciding on the
spatial scale of citizen participation projects?
Within two Dutch cities, namely; Eindhoven and Utrecht, 14 semi-structured interviews were
held with civil servants working in the field of citizen participation. They were asked about their
views on the topic, but also about their experiences with participation projects on different
spatial levels. They confirmed the idea of Tuan that most neighbourhoods are too big and too
abstract for citizens to become attached with. Place attachment was found to be the highest on
the level of the street and is lower on the higher spatial levels. Attendance at citizen
participation projects is therefore also found to be highest on the street or block level and
mostly lower on higher levels. Still, participation projects are implemented in all spatial levels.
Moreover, it was reported that scale also has influence on certain other aspects of citizen
participation. Civil servants are advised to give citizens less influence in participation projects
that are implemented in the higher levels of the spatial scale. Issues on the street level are most
of the time uncomplicated, this makes it easier to give citizens a considerable amount of
influence. On the neighbourhood or city level, more stakeholders are involved which makes it
harder to give citizens a high degree of influence. Still, the respondents think that the
neighbourhood focused way of working is profitable for citizen participation. The most
prominent reason being the presence of neighbourhood coordinators; special civil servants that
work in the neighbourhood. The neighbourhood is not necessarily the spatial level where
policies or participation projects are implemented. Rather, the neighbourhood focus is a flexible
way of working, oriented towards the demands of citizens.
Overall, spatial scale is found to be an important factor in explaining citizen participation, even
though it receives almost no attention in local policies. Civil servants are not provided with clear
instructions on how to cope with spatial scale and participation. They have to rely on their
knowledge and experience. More knowledge and better monitoring on citizen participation in
Dutch cities would help to give municipalities more guidance in implementing citizen
participation on the right spatial scale. | |
