Integrated urban transport infrastructure development: The role of digital social geo-communication in Hamburg's TEN-T improvement

Abstract

The European Union's (EU) Trans-European transport network (TEN-T) policy transport policy strives for an integrated and sustainable transport development. The process can be regarded as an ongoing spatial governance process rather than a linear transport planning and project implementation. Transport developers increasingly regard information and communication technologies (ICT) as supportive in these collaborative processes and government use Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS). Many contextual factors, institutional and technological conditions are influencing the usage and results of the tools, there is still the need to understand their role in the spatial governance processes. Therefore, exemplified by Hamburg's TEN-T green corridor project, the following question will be investigated in the paper: how did the public and governmental actors interact when utilising (PPGIS) in Hamburg's (TEN-T) green corridor project? By the means of MAXQDA, a qualitative and mixed data analysis tool the contributions of the participants from the online participation, the consultant report that summarised the contribution and government's response been analysed (GovHam, 2020a). Furthermore, a theoretical spatial governance framework had been suggested that guided the analysis. The study shows that the selective process by authorities and consulting institutions decreases the potentials of (PPGIS) to create a deliberate and transparent discussion. Hence, the results confirm other studies, showing that the social geo- communication tools are mainly used to inform participants rather than engaging reflective learning.