The effectiveness of an open planning process in obtaining public support - traffic planning in Groningen in the 1990's -

From 1995 to 1997, the municipality of Groningen was engaged in an open planning process to make a traffic plan, The Accessible City Livable (De Bereikbare Stad Leefbaar). This process, Things May Change (Het Kan Verkeeren), was regarded as a pilot project by the national government in terms of intensively involving the public from the beginning. The political executive of Groningen chose such a process to secure broad public support for the plan, through incorporating public opinion from the early stage on one hand and stimulating the public to change their existing views on the other. This paper examines whether this objective was achieved, paying attention not only to the content of each participation opportunity, but also to the plans themselves, which ought to reflect the result of participation. In fact, participants had hardly changed their views, and as a result the conflict of opinion between the environmental camp and the business camp had not been resolved through this process at all. Although the result of participation had revealed that the majority of citizens wanted to facilitate public transport and bicycles even at the expense of cars, the political executive after all made a plan that one-sidedly integrated the demands of the business community. The result of participation or just the fact that an open planning process was followed was used only to justify this plan. Therefore, many residents' and citizens' organisations expressed objections to the final product of participation.