Citizen Participation in the Built Environment: In a Commons Perspective

Business and Society Management, Rotterdam School of Management
Rotterdam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
[email protected]
Abstract: (Max words limit 250)
Citizen participation in the built environment in this abstract covers the participation through the
lens of the citizens. The built environment is seen as a common good between private, public and
club goods with high subtractability and difficult exclusion as defined by Elinor Ostrom (the first
woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences), who developed the Institutional Analysis and
Development framework (IAD). IAD is a tool for understanding the decision-making process and the
governance of the common pool resource. In this abstract the selected common pool resource is a
demolished lock in Alblasserdam, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands. A group of citizens starts an initiative
with presenting a plan of approach to restore the lock to the local government. This initiative is a
bottom-up initiative. The lock is in a primary flood defense (dyke). This means in Netherlands that
the Waterboard Rivierenland, Province Zuid-Holland and Ministry of Infrastructure and Water
Management are stakeholders. IAD visualizes the position of the exogenous variables (biophysical /
material conditions, attributes of the community and rules), the action arena with participants and
action situations, interaction between action arena and valuative criteria, outcomes and feedback to
action arena and exogenous variables. An initiative can also be top-down in the case that citizens are
asked to participate and hybrid in the case of alternate initiatives. Furthermore the participation
ladder (Sherry Arnstein in 1969) with 8 rungs can be used to value the engagement of the citizens in
the decision making process as nonparticipation, degrees of tokenism and degrees of citizen power.
Biography: (Max words limit 100)
Drs. Ing. Arie den Boer MBA is an external PhD candidate at the
Rotterdam School of Management (EUR). Ever since 2013 he has been ​
researching civic participation in regards to water heritage and
management in built environments. His research is very much influenced
by the commons theory of Elinor Ostrom. Den Boer holds an MBA in
process management control in the petrochemical industry form Erasmus
University Rotterdam (1981)
Details of the Presenting Author:
Full Name: Arie den Boer
Email ID: [email protected]
Alternative Email: [email protected]
Contact Number: 06 53 15 39 73
Country: The Netherlands
Presentation Type: Oral
Participation Mode: In-Person