Establishing citizen participation in real estate domain

Abstract

Universities in the Netherlands are challenged by the changing campus development landscape, as the number of students is outpacing the public funding and the role of universities is shifting towards a city. Universities could function as a city, or even become the city (Heijer and Magdaniel, 2012). The changing role of campuses challenges Delft University of Technology(TUD) to function as a city, governing and addressing its citizens in the same way as the city does. The recent trend in public development is citizen participation. The central government of the Netherlands promotes a collaborative way of working between citizens and local authorities. Several participation related projects have been presented, such as Omegevingswet, Delfts Doen!. Corresponding to the need for a collaborative process in public development, TUD has to ensure to involve its citizens, students, and employees in the campus development. However, to involve citizens in the campus development process is not straightforward. This study aims to design a comprehensive implementation plan for the Campus & Real Estate (CRE) division of Delft University of Technology (TUD) to promote citizen participation in campus development. The initial research question was formulated: ‘How to involve the citizens of TUD in the campus development process?’. In this context, citizens mean people who work, study, and live on campus. The main methodologies applied are literature review, interview, and research through design. The research result shows that participatory design (PD) is relatively new to real estate domain. Several challenges of implementing PD were discovered. The TUD campus development process has limited citizen involvement, as it uses a conventional real estate management approach. The prominent challenge is the misconception about the concept of users, as well as the difficulty envisioning the value that PD can bring.Therefore, the demonstration of participatory design conducted aims to deliver two values; to get CRE closer to citizens and foresee the value of PD through experimental cases with CRE. The experiment cases brought CRE closer to users and showed how citizen participation could help CRE create a a program of requirements in a relatively short time. The functional program that meets the needs and concerns of citizens can eliminate the chance to invest in the irreverent, undesirable spatial solution. The comprehensive participation plan was developed to foster the implementation of citizen participation in CRE over a long timeframe. The ultimate goal of the plan is to gradually establish citizen participation in CRE. The plan consists of an implementation plan, participation framework, and participation toolkits. They provide a practical suggestion and guidelines to systematically follow. On the basic level, it is recommended that CRE use the plan to start implementing citizen participation. Further research and experiments are needed to complete a detailed plan in of every steps. It is advisable for CRE to follow the implementation plan and execute a couple of cases to determine if the PD is a suitable approach for the organization, if the value is worth the investment, and if the organization should sustain the PD in the future.