You're caught between community stakeholders and developers in urban planning. How do you find common ground?

As per my experience, residents are generally worried about what will happen after the interventions. There are some, who don't know how the future will look like, and some others who want to know how they can make more of the new interventions. Therefore clearing the doubts of the groups is an primary step towards the mutual consent.

Balancing developer and community interests requires effective communication and shared goals.It would require to understanding both sides, open communication channels, identifying common objectives, maintaining transparency, using mediators, flexible solutions, community benefits agreements, pilot projects, incentives, data-driven discussions, community engagement, and regular updates. By ensuring collaboration, adapting to needs, and compromising when necessary, developers and community stakeholders can find a common ground. This approach can lead to successful project accomplishments that benefit both parties and the wider community.

By understanding the core concerns and goals of each party and facilitating open dialogues where both sides can express their needs and fears, ensuring everyone feels heard is a way forward. If we use data-driven insights to identify mutually beneficial solutions, such as sustainable development practices that align with community values and the developers, it will bring transperency about the constraints and possibilities, and eventually prioritise long-term benefits for both the community and the development project.

When there is a conflict between community stakeholder and the developers, the question will be choices you make as an architect/planner.You need to listen to both of them and take a decision, based on merits, professional ethics, local legal framework and keeping in view the larger Community interest. Without generalising, every Developer remains focussed on making maximum money/profit from the project, whereas demand of community shall remain the common goods. . Allowing desired profitability to Developer ,based on prescribed norms, advantage must go to community, who are paying money and seeking for better environment and quality of life. Community needs must prevail upon Developer greed- should the dictum professional should follow.

Basically, here we can talk about the community collaboration in the project's success by sensitising them about their positive impact which will lead to the stakeholders' benefit and well-being. For example, the new developments can create job opportunities for the local people.

1. Vision alignment: Studies in strategic management show that aligning goals and visions can lead to increased stakeholder commitment and improved project outcomes. 2. Shared narrative: The concept of "narrative-making" is crucial in urban planning. Research indicates that creating a shared narrative can help reduce conflicts and increase community participation. 3. Balance of interests: This text emphasizes the importance of balancing the interests of the community and developers. Studies in sustainable urban development show that projects that create balanced benefits for all stakeholders are more likely to succeed.

Often when it comes to confrontation between a developer proposing a project and affected community residents and stakeholders, the differences can be traced to developers pushing to take advantage of options to existing laws, regulations and policies and community opposition wanting to deny ever using options. Generally, any guidelines for development have exceptions which allows for flexibility both to sustain needed growth but also to get more for a community than otherwise would be made available through a development. The role of a planner is to gather intelligence on what are the root causes of community opposition and how far a developer is willing to agree on concessions to overcome such opposition.