The potential of collective action; how social capital can be used to increase collective action.
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2020-12-17
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en
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Abstract
Urban planning has been a field controlled by the government for a long time. More recently we notice that there is an increasing amount of projects involving collaboration with private parties, but also citizens tend to be more involved in the planning process. Collaborations between governments, private parties and citizens are becoming much more common. Since this is a fairly new phenomenon, not a lot of research has been done on this particular subject. One of the major issues within this development is the role that the government plays within this new landscape. Historically governments are used to having full control over planning projects, however,f the new phenomenon of citizen involvement asks for a different approach, one that is more facilitating instead of controlling. Although citizens want to be more involved in the planning process, not everybody is willing to participate in collaborative projects. So it is also a challenge to activate people to collaborate within their community. Different theories are heavily linked to these processes, the theory by Elinor Ostrom touches on how communities can establish forms of cooperation through a process of self-organization, whereas Mancur Olson’s theory suggests that cooperation within communities can only be established through governmental incentives. Both of these theories provide an approach towards potentially successful collective action. However, there is a lack of research exploring the implications of these theories in an urban setting. This research used a literature study to develop a thorough understanding of the theories of Olson and Ostrom and used them as the basis for developing the factors that influence collective action. The two main points that can be derived from the literature are the role of social capital and government interventions in the process of collective action. These concepts are central to the relations that are explored in this research. The first relation indicates that government interventions have an impact on social capital, and the second relation indicates that this social capital has an impact on collective action. These relations lead to the following main question that is central to this research: “What is the influence of social capital on the extent of collective action, and how does the government influence this process?”. To answer this question data was gathered from people in the neighborhoud of Euljiro in Seoul, South Korea using a survey. This area was picked because there used to be a lot of collaborative planning in Seoul, however, this has been declining for a while. The neighborhoud has a long history of entrepreneurs that keep their shops in Euljiro. Also, the neighborhoud seems perfectly fit for forms of collective action since the area needs to be redeveloped and collective action would be a perfect alternative for complete redevelopment by the government, this way the area would be preserved while still being renovated. The survey was conducted in collaboration with Korean students, they helped as translators to communicate with the respondents. Eventually, we gathered 285 surveys, the results were then used to execute regression analysis that investigated the before mentioned relations. Two single linear regression analyses were performed, one analyzing the relation between the independent variable government interventions and the dependent variable social capital and one analyzing the relation between the independent variable social capital and the dependent variable collective action. The analysis results show that there is a connection between government interventions, social capital, and collective action. So these concepts play a role when trying to establish successful collective action. Governments should take into account how they approach spatial planning projects. There is a need for an approach that is more facilitating and less controlling, so that trust can be developed between government and citizens and thus enhancing the social capital in the area and therefore also increasing the chances of successful collective action. Follow-up research could focus on developing an even better understanding of this process to contribute to more successful collective action planning.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen