Elsevier

Progress in Planning

Volume 120, February 2018, Pages 1-28
Progress in Planning

Coping with ambiguity: An urban megaproject ethnography

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2016.07.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ambiguity is both a fundamental and understudied feature of urban megaprojects.

  • Ethnography can criticize, complement and innovate planning research.

  • We immersed in the management of the Zuidas megaproject for half a year.

  • The project concept is the dominant structure to deal with ambiguity.

  • Incremental progress rather than more fundamental discussions are central.

Abstract

Integrated urban megaprojects that attempt to (re-)develop parts of cities are complex affairs. The planners employed in them decide on large real estate, infrastructure and public space investments. The lengthy delivery trajectories of these projects undoubtedly result in emerging properties and changes in the social, political and spatial settings in which they are implemented. This ethnographic study focuses on the question how planners cope with this ambiguity in such non canonical practices. By immersion in the Amsterdam Zuidas urban megaproject for half a year, planners were observed in action. The ethnography reconstructs three episodes that represent typical interaction activities that they undertook to discuss progress of the project. The study shows how planners handle diverse types of ambiguity via different coping mechanism and reflects on the implications of these tactics for the project. It also discusses methods, potentials and pitfalls of ethnographic research in urban megaproject scholarship.

Introduction

In the last decades, urban megaprojects have been a central tool in strategies of political and economic elites to foster urban competitiveness (Del Cerro Santamaría, 2013). They can be analyzed as ‘self-induced shocks’ in the metropolitan landscape in their aim to physically and economically (re-)develop a particular site in the metropolitan area (Grabher & Thiel, 2015). Although a quintessence aspect is their localized transformation, they are undoubtedly connected to wider spatial and political scales. Urban megaprojects also have an important symbolic value to celebrate progress and competitiveness for city governments and economic elites, hence the importance of star architecture in these places (Ponzini and Nastasi, 2012, Sklair, 2006).

Diaz Orueta and Fainstein (2008) distinguish a contemporary generation of ‘new megaprojects’ that claim to balance physical, economic, social and sustainable goals. Although such inclusive rhetoric is visible in many current urban megaprojects (Carmona, 2009), conflicts about their finances, designs and impacts is widespread (Gualini, 2015, Healey, 2010). Urban megaprojects therefore occupy a peculiar position in urban planning practice: beloved by most political and economic elites and infused by a strong rhetoric of progress but also contested and heavily criticized. This paper aims to add to the urban megaproject debate by focusing on their trajectory of delivery. We claim that we have to understand them in conjunction with a volatile and uncertain environment in which these long-term projects are shaped and implemented. By taking this more dynamic perspective the paper contributes both to planning literature that takes an empirical perspective on planners-in-action (Forester, 1989, Forester, 1999, Laws and Forester, 2015, Schön, 1983) as well as to an emerging stream of literature that focuses on the capacity of urban megaprojects to change and adapt and be more resilient in the face of changing conditions (Dimitriou, Ward, & Wright, 2013; Giezen, 2012, Majoor, 2015b).

By using an ethnographic approach, this paper aims for methodological innovation in planning studies since it explores the often scarcely accessible internal world of urban megaproject delivery. It creates ‘thick descriptions’ of how planners inside these projects cope with the classic dilemma of delivery of very concrete investments in public space, infrastructures and real estate, in a setting of contextual ambiguity. The goal of the paper is twofold: (1) by exploring how planners cope with the volatile and uncertain environment of urban megaproject delivery it reflects upon planning and organizational theories and enhances our understanding how urban megaprojects could better cope with issues of adaptability, resilience and change; and (2) by using ethnographic methods, and reflecting upon them, the paper aims to add insights to what extent ethnography as a method could enhance urban megaproject studies.

The paper is structured in the following way. The next section deepens the concept of urban mega-project delivery from planning and organizational theories, with an emphasis on the ambiguous settings these projects face. Section three introduces ethnography as a research method to analyze urban megaproject planners coping with such settings. It shows the different sides of ethnography and the wide variety of methods and practices used within it. The next section introduces the case study of the Amsterdam Zuidas urban megaproject in the Netherlands and explains the ethnographic methods used. Section five presents the results of the ethnographic study, organized and analyzed via three ‘episodes’ of interaction that have been closely observed. The final section concludes how planners have coped with ambiguity in this case and reflects on the research methods and the prospects and limitations of ethnographic fieldwork for urban megaproject studies.

Section snippets

Ambiguity and urban megaproject delivery

Many academic overviews, political debates and media-discussions revolve around the question why urban megaproject delivery has often been so disappointing (Altshuler and Luberoff, 2003, Fainstein, 2008, Majoor, 2011; Moulaert, Rodríguez, & Swyngedouw, 2003; Priemus, Flyvbjerg, & Van Wee, 2008). Although local circumstances differ and positive examples are identified as well (Healey, 2010), scholars have recognized almost consistent gaps between initial promises and the often disappointing

Exploring ethnography

This section introduces ethnography as a research method especially capable of analysing complex practices up-close. Ethnography is a crucial method to follow the recommendation of Laws and Forester (2015), that when studying professionals operating in the field of planning, it is particularly powerful to see what they are doing, and how they are shaping situations. We will outline several aspects of this methodology, including the practicalities of doing ethnographic fieldwork. The most

Case study history

The Amsterdam Zuidas project is being undertaken by a complex network of actors in an ambiguous setting. It is a currently ongoing project that started in the mid-1990s to (re-)develop a 270 ha area on the south side of the Dutch capital of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) into a mixed use area for offices, housing and facilities. The centrepiece of the project is a busy corridor of infrastructure − road, heavy rail, metro and a station (see Fig. 2). The combination of its complexity and time

Episode 1: dealing with ambiguity in crafting a text

The first episode played out in a small meeting room in the project office and is about the (re-)crafting of a text by two members. It is an important text, namely a document that would inform the city council of Amsterdam about the progress of the project. As a decade-long development project operating under democratic control of the city council, decision-making was organized in such a way that the council is updated once in a while to have the opportunity to make decisions. This is due to

Concluding discussion

The three ethnographic episodes and accompanying reflections were an attempt to give inside perspectives and thick descriptions of the way the organization coped with ambiguity in the context of a project that faced the pressure to come to agreements in a complex governance settings. In this concluding section some distance is taken from the empirical observations and a return is made to the conceptual framework (Fig. 1) to reflect on what has been experienced and to connect these insights to

Acknowledgements

This study has been made possible due to the hospitality of the Zuidas department management. I am fully aware how special such an opportunity is in a project like this and want to thank everybody there for their time, openness and curiosity in the project. Alfons van Marrewijk and Merlijn van Hulst were helpful in finetuning the ethnography plan, while Willem Salet has been invaluable as mentor and critical reader of earlier drafts. Three anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal

Stan Majoor ([email protected]) is professor Coordination Urban Issues at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, in the section Urban Management. He has a background in urban planning and policy studies. His principal research interests are in large-scale urban development projects, innovation in local policy making and the interface between planning and organizational studies. Empirical work for this paper was done when he was assistant professor in urban planning at the Amsterdam

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    Stan Majoor ([email protected]) is professor Coordination Urban Issues at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, in the section Urban Management. He has a background in urban planning and policy studies. His principal research interests are in large-scale urban development projects, innovation in local policy making and the interface between planning and organizational studies. Empirical work for this paper was done when he was assistant professor in urban planning at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research at the University of Amsterdam.

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