Multiple voices, perceptions and futures: Five lessons from community responses to road development proposals

摘要

This paper presents an overview of recent research into community responses to road transport changes, and presents five 'lessons' learned to highlight common community responses that are easy to miss in assessments, due to their low visibility. The research used a re-analysis of existing data on New Zealand community responses to build a predictive model, and develop guidelines and practical analytic tools to aid in assessing community responses. Salient categories for classification of case data were identified using qualitative analysis. An empirically based predictive spreadsheet model of how communities respond was developed in this way, along with a set of practical guidelines for community effects appraisal. These were presented to traffic engineers and planning professionals in a series of seminars and interviews, to identify when the model and guidelines could be a useful adjunct to planning processes. A pilot phase saw refinement of these into a stepwise 'matrix analysis' for use in identifying transport effects on community stakeholder activities, and potential treatments or mitigation. The five lessons drawn from the research revolve around the need for consultation and dialogue to gain access to community information that is crucial but has low visibility.