Participative process for mobility/transport strategy development

Summary

Stakeholder involvement is a key element of identifying, evaluating and prioritising future user needs, new transport concepts, implications and potential reactions from society. Collaborations and exchange are needed across a diverse stakeholder group from various sectors and perspectives to develop efficient solutions and tap the full potential of new opportunities. Most importantly, users will have to be directly involved in a bottom-up approach. Hence, it is required to bring together a very diverse stakeholder group with a variety of individual interest to discuss a rather complex topic. A process that enables such a group to develop a common language and vision and to discuss collaboration potentials has been refined and implemented by the project Mobility4EU. The process described here is the story map methodology that provides a creative and interactive tool. It can be combined with other scientific consultation and assessment methodologies or stand on its own. In the present case the process towards building an action plan is described. It can however be flexibly be adapted to deliver a vision only or derive other strategic output as a roadmap or action plan.

So-called story maps (David Sibbet, Visual Leaders: New Tools for Visioning, Management, and Organization Change. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2012.) are a rather comprehensive approach of graphic visualisation in the context of strategy development. Large murals or a series of posters are created that represent e.g. the history of a problem, challenges and opportunities, individual values and expectations. Typically, it contains a context map, a commonly drawn picture of the future vision and a roadmap describing the action plan for achieving that vision. This approach supports the alignment of goals in a participatory manner. The graphic visualisation of information (e.g. on posters) is a successful way to interactively facilitate group work. It is particularly powerful in strategic planning processes where new insights shall arise from the engagement and cooperation of many participants with diverse backgrounds. Drawing a big picture of a problem during a meeting can reveal relationships between different aspects and perspectives. It thereby helps to think in systems and to align the understanding of all group members. Furthermore, it creates a memorable product that everybody sees being created. This strengthens the participants’ relation with the outcome, helps them to tell the story about the plan and supports the implementation of follow-up actions.