A qualitative exploration of actors’ power resources and relations in Swiss transit station district planning

ABSTRACT

Cross-sectoral collaboration between actors is essential when planning station districts for transit-oriented development. However, power relations and the resulting dominance of selected actors complicate collaborative processes and the necessary integration between transportation and urban planning. Despite the previous problematization of power in planning, dedicated research is lacking on station districts. This article aims to tackle this literature gap through qualitative case studies of two station districts in Switzerland. The findings suggest that municipalities and public transport providers use power resources to assume institutional roles outside their traditional planning domains, partly as a tactical response to initiatives that they contest. For planning practice, the article proposes that process organizers grasp actors’ power potentials early and, if mobilized, integrate them in favor of broadly supported station district development.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning practice
• power relations
• power resources
• transit-oriented development
• transit station districts

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the interviewees and the Co-Creating Mobility Hubs project team for sharing their time, experience, and knowledge. I also wish to warmly thank the reviewers, particularly Prof. Dr. Michael Stauffacher and Dr. Bianca Vienni Baptista, for their constructive suggestions and invaluable feedback. Finally, I want to thank Sandro Bösch for his pivotal help with the graphical figures and Swiss Federal Railways and ETH Zurich for supporting this research.

Ethics declarations

The ETH Zurich Ethics Commission (Proposal 2020-N-93) reviewed and approved this research, and the study’s participants provided appropriate informed consent.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

Due to the nature of this research, this study’s participants did not agree to allow their data to be shared publicly, so supporting data were not available.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

Swiss Federal Railways supported this research, and ETH Zurich provided open access funding.