Consensus Planning: The Relevance of Communicative Planning Theory in Duth Infrastructure Development

The Relevance of Communicative Planning Theory in Duth Infrastructure Development

Johan Woltjer

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138728837
• eBook ISBN: 9781351748902
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was published in 2000: This text offers a standpoint on communicative, participatory planning called "consensus planning". The discussion takes place in the Netherlands, where consensus-based decision-making is part of the national heritage. The book explores recent Dutch infrastructure development experiences and concludes that communicative planning theory does not offer uniform relevance for the challenges that planning practitioners face. Building on these experiences, it proposes the concept of consensus planning as valuable in a complementary, normalized, and contingent way. Consensus planning, in other words, has diverse practical appearances and sometimes may not exist or be desirable.

1 Introduction

1.1 Background

Imagine living in a suburb, on the outskirts of a Dutch city. One day, in the local newspaper you read about a proposal for a new highway to link the city with other main economic centres elsewhere in the country. The map to the article shows that your house is located well within the expected noise zone of one alternative route for the highway. The article also mentions an opportunity for the public to comment on the proposal at city hall. What to do?

Such planning situations are quite common. They usually involve the same basic questions about the way people and organisations sharing an interest in such a project should interact. The questions include the extent to which people feel the need to participate in the planning process, think society has to decide about projects like this, are willing to visit the information meeting, or write a response or organise a protest action. It is also about how people trust governments and their planners to represent their interests, and think that citizen or interest group participation provides better projects or better decision making. Questions such as these are important but are conditional on a certain context. Consequently, answers to questions like these depend on the situations and views of the individuals involved.

Invariably, planning processes are subject to some sort of consensus building among professionals in planning institutions and, sometimes, among interest groups and the public. Planners and planning regulations usually attempt to foster certain degrees of establishing consensus and ensure that participation of interested parties is made possible. Yet many planning processes still proceed with an inadequate representation of interests and often end in problems such as lack of public acceptance, ineffective outcomes or long-lasting disagreement. In recent years we have been confronted with an avalanche of literature about approaches to addressing such problems. In particular, authors like Fisher & Ury (1981), Susskind & Cruikshank, (1987), Forester (1989), Healey (1993) and Innes (1994) have published international milestone books and articles to this subject. In a broad sense, these authors and others use a variety of names for such approaches, including co-operation, consensus building, alternative dispute resolution, integrative bargaining, participatory planning, interactive decision making, collaborative planning, joint problem solving, and so on. The study will refer to such approaches as consensus-planning approaches.

According to Sager (1994), consensus processes are processes of interaction between individuals or quasi individuals participating in a planning process. Quasi individuals then refer to groups of persons or organisations that act as one uniform actor. Susskind and Cruikshank

(1987) use the term consensus building and define it as a voluntary effort involving informal, face-to-face interaction among stakeholder representatives to resolve disputes. Consensus-planning approaches are a way to address conflict in planning, but more importantly a strategy to produce plans that enjoy widespread support from stakeholders. In recent years, both academic and professional planners have become more convinced that planning should be a consensus-oriented process.

The discussion about communicative planning and consensus planning is an international one. The use of consensus approaches in practice is considerable in many western countries, including the United States (Innes, 1995) and Canada (Hamel, 1997; Connor, 1999). Also in Germany consensus-planning approaches have gained significance (Sinnig, 1995; Stein, 1995; Selle, 1996). Other international literature on consensus and related approaches has been published in countries like Italy (e.g. Balducci, 1998; Calvaresi, 1998), Portugal (Lourenço, 1998; Vasconcelos, 1998), Israel (e.g. Vraneski & Altermann, 1996), Norway (Sager, 1996; Holsen & Swensen, 1998), Finland (Sotarauta, 1998), France (Tricot, 1994) and the United Kingdom (Healey, 1993; McCarthy, 1998; Petts, 1995).

The turn towards consensus-oriented planning approaches is also relevant for the Netherlands. Particularly, infrastructure developments in the Netherlands have been, and still are, largely considered a technical activity. Under social and political circumstances, however, Dutch plan making is often experienced as a complicated, lengthy and ‘syrupy’ activity. Herein, government planning agencies have increasingly become dependent upon other interested parties to show support for a plan. Characteristically, government no longer holds an autonomous decision making position, as Den Hoed et al (1983) and Zonneveld (1991) have made clear. Furthermore, the emphasis on the ‘technical information’ of professional planners as the sole information basis for decision making is increasingly considered inappropriate as it often excludes the complexity of actual processes. This traditional type of knowledge is no longer automatically associated with ‘good quality information’ and effective and efficient policy measures (Procee, 1997). As Teisman (1992), among others, has argued, planners need to have diversified roles beyond the role of the technical expert.

Often inspired by the international planning literature, studies of Dutch infrastructure development processes thus endorse communicative approaches as a possible solution (see for example, Ten Heuvelhof & Termeer, 1991; Huigen et al, 1993; Voogd & Woltjer, 1996; De Bruijn et al, 1996). In addition, leading Dutch institutions such as the Scientific Council on Government Policy – known by its Dutch acronym WRR – consider spatial planning to require greater opportunities for the active involvement of a multiplicity of actors or ‘stakeholders’ (WRR, 1998).

The study explores the question of whether employing this ‘communicative ideology’ as a leading principle in planning is a shrewd road to take. It asks the question whether such activities as direct participation, extensive dialogue, and collaboration beyond formal procedures should be undertaken. If so, the study discusses to what extent they should be done, considering their practical use within a specific institutional structure. The study examines the theoretical underpinnings of similar approaches for their relevance to the actual quality of planning processes and their outcomes. The underpinnings bring a type of control to planning that involves informal participants. This study will introduce the notion of consensus planning. Subsequently, it will investigate how much emphasis consensus planning should receive. Should planners in the Netherlands – and in other countries – rely more heavily on consensus planning to develop and manage motorways, railroads, airfields and other infrastructure developments? This paramount question will be explored throughout the entire study and specifically answered in the last chapter.

Empirical Frame of Reference

Dutch infrastructure development practice is the empirical reference frame for the study. Decisions regarding the planning of new infrastructures cannot always count on everyone’s consent. Disagreement exists because such decisions affect many different individuals and organisations. Actors bring varying experiences, perceptions, value judgements, and interests to the situation. Therefore, as e.g. Schwartz and Eichhorn (1997) have argued, infrastructure planning cannot be restricted to a technical professional approach. Recent experiences in the Netherlands with the preparation of high-speed railways, freight railways, new motorways, and expansions of airports show that social processes and consensus play an extremely important role in realising new infrastructure projects.

The planning literature describes various causes of the increase in difficulties to finish decision making for infrastructure situations adequately. Masser et al (1992) and Voogd (1996), for instance, mention some causes. Scarcity of space and conflicting claims over existing territories are important. Also, a high public awareness of infrastructure impacts on the environment connected with active interest groups has surged. Finally, transportation has, increasingly, become a complex society problem, considering the multitude and diversity of issues that must be taken into consideration (Linden, 1989; Jeffs & Hills, 1990).

Dutch consensus-planning processes in infrastructure practice are referred to with a multifarious terminology. This includes terms such as network management, open plan making, co-production, participatory policy development, interactive plan making, or public support acquisition. Proponents argue that such approaches enhance democratic decision making and make the administration more effective. The growing use of such approaches in experiments suggests that the Dutch planning system is relatively open to innovation.

This study in particular focuses on the experiences in infrastructure development at regional and national levels. Consequently, the planning of major railways, motorways, airports and some projects related to water management are under examination. Such public works are part of the broad notion of ‘infrastructure’ which is a very generic term (Israel, 1992). Jochimsen (1966), for example, distinguished between material, institutional, and personal infrastructures. In this study, infrastructure refers to all constructional works that are, both directly and indirectly, available for transportation (Voogd, 1996). Transportation is the movement of people and goods from a point of origin to a destination.

In the Dutch situation, many authors focus on the ‘long-windedness’ of decision-making procedures (Bruning & Siersma, 1994; Bussink, 1994). The slowness may be due to the complexity of the Dutch legal system. Among other things, the attention focuses on the NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) phenomenon to point out that the people directly affected by an infrastructural project often use their power to disrupt the process and force it to proceed slowly. Such delay activities particularly happen in the implementation stages of planning processes. Advocates of speeding up decision-making processes seek solutions in restricting the possibilities of the use of obstructive power by law. Therefore, the Physical Planning Act has been changed to include a regulation for overruling local legislation. For the same reason, the planning procedures for major projects have been formalised in a special so-called Road and Rail Routes Act.

Besides restrictions, extensions of involvement have been proposed. In this discussion, the focus is on the lack of participation in the early exploration stages of plan development (WRR, 1994). In infrastructure development processes, affected parties often feel they are being presented with ‘pre-cooked’, already elaborated proposals. Consequently, they will not accept the proposal. Planning agencies may seek solutions for this problem by involving as many people as possible in the preparation stages to save time later on. The so-called ‘need and purpose debates’ about the shortage of space in the Rotterdam harbour area and about the future of air transport in the Netherlands are examples of an early involvement of stakeholders.

In a small – about 40,000 km2 – and densely populated country, which the Netherlands is, large infrastructural projects often involve difficult planning processes. The processes provide intriguing problems such as conflicting interests over ecology, environment, economics and housing, and a multiplicity of stakeholders. Consequently, planners often find it difficult to follow planning processes that ensure, for example, administrative efficiency and democratic participation, while, at the same time, deliver good quality products that provide qualities such as transportation mobility and sustainability. This study investigates the retrospective and present role of consensus approaches with regard to the ‘process – product’ dichotomy.

Theoretical Frame of Reference

Planning theory teaches that consensus approaches are a difficult and complex matter. As will be elaborated in Chapter Two, many insights stem from communicative planning and public participation literature since the late 1960s. For example, Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation, published in 1969, still is a frequently used classification system (e.g. Hendriks et al, 1999). Also, contemporary consensus-building literature builds on many disciplines, including sociology, social psychology, political sciences, and Law. Literature suggests that many different approaches or strategies – such as collaboration, negotiation, and persuasion – contribute to a consensus for decisions (Voogd & Woltjer, 1995).

The main characteristic of consensus planning is that planning products such as public works are created based on opinions. To achieve this, actors with an interest that bears relation to the planning problem under consideration, participate in some co-operative, negotiating or will-shaping process. According to De Jong (1986) the supreme result of such processes is a consensus. Consensus, then, refers to a general agreement of opinion or collective opinion in a certain group. It implies consensus planning is a kind of planning in which a group of people aim at an agreement that is acceptable to all those involved. A consensus exists if no one within the group has insurmountable objections. It also means that a majority, as in majority voting, is not a consensus.

In consensus planning, the participants in the group do not have to agree on everything. They may, for example, agree that a transportation connection between A and B is important but disagree on exactly how the connection should be constructed. They may also disagree on the environmental effects of the connection but agree on a package deal that provides compensation.

Overall, then, consensus is determined by group composition and by a particular subject. This suggests that consensus always features a topic or range of topics first and, secondly, a certain group of people. Therefore, consensus planning involves continuous choices with regard to selecting information or certain subjects for discussion and choosing which people to involve. A change in one of the two may signal the end or precisely the beginning of consensus. The link with the properties topic and people make consensus variable, evolutionary and dynamic. At times, therefore, consensus will be stable and contain little conflict. This may be the case, for instance, regarding certain strategic planning goals over long periods of time. Faludi & Van der Valk (1994) claim that such consensus can be so robust that it establishes itself as a ‘planning doctrine’. At other occasions, consensus may be unstable and only exists shortly under a discordant atmosphere. For both a stable and an unstable consensus, again, there is a connection with a certain topic and a group of people involved.

Following Scheff (1967), consensus reflects the extent to which individuals are analogous regarding their perception, judgement and decision regarding a common topic. A consensus can be explored by asking every member of a certain group the question of whether he or she agrees to a topic. It exists to the extent to which the members decide to the question uniformly. Consequently, consensus can exist in situations of opposite interests and dissimilar judgements. It should be acknowledged, however, that not all consensus efforts lead to consensus. Nevertheless, when agreements for action are reached, they are always done so by consensus (Gray, 1989).

It should also be acknowledged that consensus processes also include conflict. Although conflict can clearly have negative effects, it should not merely be viewed as necessarily negative (Bryson, 1989; Moscovici & Doise, 1994). A positive aspect is that conflicts reveal interdependencies between actors. Conflict may also increase the amount of available resources. Furthermore, conflict implies a permanent testing of positions. And, lastly, conflict can clarify the problem. Some authors even argue that conflict and dissensus are absolute necessities to get good quality decisions. This ‘paradox’ of consensus was found by the socio-psychologists Moscovici and Doise (1994). Controversies show the extent to which individuals feel concerned and provide conditions to search for new solutions. The degree of conflict is a measure for the power of the consensus:

It follows from this, as we have noted on several occasions, that the optimum agreements, those best internalised, will be those concluded between parties whose relationships normally assume a character of greatest conflict and the least quantum of spontaneous conformity. (Moscovici and Doise, 1994, p. 178)

Obviously, it should be noted here that consensus does not automatically ensue out of a conflict. In this sense, conflict may well be something to avoid.

An important characteristic of consensus planning is that beyond the usual attention given to content related or substantive matters, more attention is given to the process. The way in which things are decided is as important as the substantive outcome of decision making (De Soet, 1988). Therefore, in this research, an explicit distinction will be made between process and product related issues, as has been common in planning theory (Faludi, 1973). Process includes how issues are discussed, how problems are defined and how strategies to address them are articulated (Healey, 1997). A product includes the nature of the planning problem an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theoretical Underpinnings
• 3 Some Relevant Issues for Consensus Planning
• 4 The Setting: Infrastructure Development in The Netherlands
• 5 Evaluating Consensus Planning: An Overall Picture of Dutch Initiatives
• 6 Evaluating Consensus Planning: An Assessment Based on Complexity
• 7 Evaluating Consensus Planning: The Position of Residents in Two Cases
• 8 Evaluating Consensus Planning: Some Critical Reflections
• 9 The Essence of Consensus Planning
• Bibliography
• Index