Civitown Agreement on Bus Rapid Transit Scheme
Ivana Diamant (Chamber of Commerce), Vaclav Verde (Citizen’s Action Committee) and Wout Mesto (City Council) were just three out of about a dozen stakeholders coming together on 24 April for a final and at times controversial stakeholder meeting in Civitown. Contrary to the expectations of most Civitonians, the stakeholders were able to reach a common agreement on the long-awaited bus rapid transit scheme in the centre of Civitown.
However, it required the skills of the experienced moderator Felicitas Facilitador who managed to control an outburst of the local school rector Drago Importantic (who is equally concerned about the safety of his pupils and the availability of parking lots for his teachers) and ultimately guided the heated debate to a mutually acceptable compromise: The Bus Rapid Transit scheme will be implemented at the end of this year. None of the ancient trees on Corridor Avenue, but a limited number of parking places will need to be sacrificed to construct the required separated bus lane, and a safety study will be undertaken prior to the start of the scheme implementation. It will now be up to the Civitown City Council to formally decide upon the stakeholder suggestion.What was set up as a two-hour interactive role play for CiViTAS-ELAN measure leaders turned out to be a fun-filled and memorable module of the project’s training workshop on stakeholder involvement in Zagreb. A group of 45 project partners from Brno, Gent, Ljubljana, Porto and Zagreb got together in the Old City Hall of Zagreb to discuss do’s and don’ts of stakeholder involvement. The workshop started with a series of theoretical contributions on stakeholder involvement, including presentations on the relationship and importance of stakeholder involvement for process evaluation and a special focus on citizen’s engagement. The step from theory to practice was made by two remarkable presentations on the involvement of stakeholders in the reconstruction of the St. Pieters train station in Gent (by Greet Riebbels) and in the preparation of Odense’s new Mobility Plan (by Connie Juel Clausen). The ELAN partners were then able to use their (partially newly acquired) knowledge in the role play sketched above. Realistic elements were mixed with fictitious and funny elements. At the end, participants agreed to have made some good experiences and new insights into stakeholder involvement - and not to be underestimated, got to better know each other and had an enjoyable time. After the role play, the workshop was wrapped up. The main lessons learned from these two half-days in Zagreb were: 1. The chances for a successful stakeholder involvement process will increase if an experienced (professional) and independent moderator leads the discussions.2. It is important to carefully identify all relevant stakeholder groups in order to avoid that stakeholders are left out and cannot voice their opinions. 3. The stakeholder involvement process should be started as early as possible in order to avoid that decisions are made without stakeholders.4. Especially within a project involving stakeholders from five quite different cultural backgrounds, it became evident that very different argumentation styles are common in the respective countries. And even within one city, the moderator needs to be prepared to facilitate the discussion between stakeholders of different cultural background, temperament, educational background, etc. 5. The organiser of a stakeholder involvement process should make sure that all invited stakeholders share the same level of information. If necessary, the organiser should provide missing information.6. Stakeholder involvement, unlike the role play set-up, requires a series of meetings. Often the trust building process between the (opposing) stakeholder groups will take a lot of time and can only be achieved gradually. 7. The repetition of stakeholder involvement modules (such as workshops) is important in order to build a participation culture.8. Stakeholder meetings are only one of many tools to involve stakeholders in the implementation and decision-making process. Other tools are focus group meetings, study visits, citizen juries, etc.9. The moderation of a meeting can be facilitated by using tools such as flip charts or black boards, aerial maps and photos of the implementation area, expert studies, etc.10. Representation from the decision-making level plays an important role for an agreement. The higher the representation from the decision-making level, the more likely it is that an agreement will be reached.
