In 2004 Flanders, the northern region of Belgium launched a range of large public–private partnership (PPP) projects for a total value of 6 billion euros. Ten years later, PPP has become a well‐embedded procurement method for long‐term public infrastructure projects. This article makes a critical ‘round‐up’ of PPP experience in Belgium based on the perspectives of infrastructure professionals who were asked to provide their views on performance‐related issues in PPP projects. Two workshops were held to further enrich the input and ideas. Based on this empirical material this article formulates 10 lessons to improve PPP performance, which is deliberately broadly defined. It argues that the dominant ‘value for money’ evaluations, following strictly financial or commercial logics (in both the private and public sectors), need to be broadened. Given the large impact and cost of large infrastructure projects on society, broader societal and spatial contributions of PPPs are needed.
Megaprojects are complex and contain multiple risks and uncertainties. The dominant 'predict and control' planning method mainly ignores risks and uncertainties, making megaprojects inflexible and vulnerable to unforeseen changes. Insights and methods from real options theory (ROT) in economics and finance have the potential to improve planning of megaprojects in three ways: (a) better management and assessment of risks and uncertainties, (b) a more transparent and explicit identification and communication of risks and uncertainties, and (c) a monetary valuation of flexibility. An in-depth literature review of 42 papers of real options applications to megaprojects serves as a benchmark to analyse if current real options literature meets these three expectations. Through this review, we identify the main trends, relevance and research gaps. While its theoretical relevance is illustrated, three main gaps impede real options' practical relevance for megaprojects: the applications paint an incomplete picture of megaprojects; its mathematical complexity; and the lack of empirical evidence of real-life cases. Based on a plea for more interactive research between scholars and planning practitioners, we provide an agenda for further research as to how ROT can better meet its expectations and fulfill its potential for the planning of megaprojects.
In the literature on public opposition against spatial projects, social acceptance is considered a key variable in predicting protest. However, the process by which low levels of social acceptance are translated into real protest actions has received less attention in academia. Social movement theories predict that protest participation is strongly affected by social interaction. This article aims to connect theories on locational conflict with the growing literature on the neighborhood effect in social mobilization by conducting an empirical study of rare and unobtrusive data of protest participation, on the neighbourhood level in particular. Our case study focuses on opposition against a highway project in the city of Antwerp, Belgium. Based on a large, geocoded database with addresses of protesters and activists, we build a model to analyze activism and mobilization in neighborhoods. We control for the distance between the neighborhood and the project, as well as the socio-demographic profile of the neighborhood. As expected, we find that distance has a significant impact on the occurrence of protest. Contrary to expectations, the aggregated socio-demographic profile of a neighborhood is not significantly related to levels of opposition. However, the presence of social capital and the presence of active protesters are good predictors of protest participation in the neighborhood. These findings support theories on the collective efficacy of neighborhoods.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.