The paradigmatic shift in Dutch water management culture

Abstract

The Room for the River project stands as a stepping stone in water management strategies, distinguished by a paradigmatic shift in Dutch water culture towards decentralization of the decision-making process and spatial quality embedded in spatial planning projects. The research presents a comprehensive analysis of the program, focusing on the case study of Nijmegen, through interviews with relevant stakeholders, revealing insights into the planning process, its execution, and the final outcome.
The pivotal concepts of decentralization of the decision-making process towards a bottom-up approach, and the one of spatial quality strongly embedded in the design phase, are analyzed and discussed, first on a general level and then relating to the specific case study.
The outcome of the project is analyzed through the interviews, understanding the point of view of the involved stakeholders and their perception on the execution of the works, and discerned with the mapping tool, comparing the information gathered personally during visits on site to the information extracted from the interviews. Moreover, challenges such as the unforeseen uses of the designed spaces are taken into consideration in the personal analysis and discussed at the end of the research, providing possible implementation to the process for the future.