The client
Subjects such as 'space for all Ghentians' and 'urban densification' are concepts that are important within the City of Ghent, but often give rise to questions or false expectations among citizens. The City aims to inform their citizens clearly about urban development projects in order to generate more support for them.
The challenge
In practice, the City is encountering a great deal of resistance to the principle of 'wise densification'. Ghent sees densification as possible primarily in the 20th-century districts of Ghent, such as Wondelgem, Mariakerke and Zwijnaarde. Here there are many possibilities for dividing up the space more efficiently, with extra building, while in the densely populated city centre it is just a question of greening up and depolluting.
For the current residents of the 20th-century neighbourhoods, there is a strong NotInMyBackYard effect. Each additional building project is seen as a backyard development, a loss of land value, an attack on green space, more traffic in the neighbourhood, etc. In the press, too, there are reactions from groups of residents who oppose new building projects in their neighbourhood.
The city of Ghent is looking for insight into the residents of these 20th century neighbourhoods, what their expectations and concerns are regarding densification, in order to subsequently convert these insights into a communication strategy.
Our approach
In order to answer the various questions, we approached this project in a number of phases. In a first step, we gathered insights from both citizens who are confronted with densification in their city district, and employees of the involved services of the City of Ghent. Through qualitative interviews we asked citizens and employees about their experience with respect to urban compacting projects. We mapped out the needs, requirements and expectations. We also listened to their experiences about how they experienced communication in previous projects.
Then we got to work with all these insights, translating them in a co-creative way into personas. These personas are intended to communicate from the various citizens and to look for solutions, rather than from the vision drawn up by the City. We therefore integrated the concerns and expectations that these citizens have regarding urban planning projects in their neighbourhood.
In order to quantitatively validate the persona and previously acquired insights, an online questionnaire was widely shared. First, the current knowledge about urban densification and what it means for the residents was surveyed, and then the different phases of a building project were discussed in terms of expected information and communication channels.
Kwalitatief en kwantitatief gebruikersonderzoek
20
interviews conducted528
participants of the online survey2
co-creation workshopsThe result
The insights from the interviews provided some clear core values of both the citizen's vision on densification and insight into the challenges within the city services to communicate clearly on these types of projects.
For the City of Ghent, the aim of this collaboration was to gain more insight and to create support among citizens. It was therefore important to present a clear story, with the acquired insights and opportunities, to the colleagues of the City of Ghent and other stakeholders. We did this by means of a communication strategy based on the various personas, at the level of sensitising, informing and participating.
During various information moments, the insights were presented in a clear manner.
