The Civil Engineering office in Skellefteå needs to develop the users' participation
in the planning of parks and playgrounds. In order to get such a procedure
to work one have to find a method that can work in the daily activity. My
work aims to find such a method and to implement it in practice. Apart from
helping the Parks departement to find an functional method I will also develop
a deepened knowledge about users’participation wich can be very useful i my
future profession.
This work can be divided in three stages. I began by reading literature about
users' participation and methods that could be appropriate. Then I chose two
methods that I finally used in a residential area with single family hoses in
Skellefteå. In this work users are defined as those who are assumed to use
those areas and the service that the Parks departement is responsible for.
I have chosen to describe five different methods that can be can used when one
want to know what users' appriciate in their surroundings and what they would
like to see in the future. These methods are questionnaire, focus group, big
meeting, walks and Open Space.
In the example chapter, I present projects from Göteborg, Malmö and Stockholm
that contain users' participation. It is all kinds of projects from green
structure planning to a creation of a playground. What the examples have in
common is that the municipality has been entierly or partially responsible for
the projects and the used methods work in a municipal administration.
I chose two methods that complement each other, these were questionnaire
and focus group. I chose the questionnaire because it is a relatively simple way
of recieving answers from many people at once. The focus group was a way
to get deeper and get a personal contact with the users and it was appropriate
for the number of participants and the cold time of the year. I implemented the
methods on Mobacken, a neighbourhood in Skellefteå. I handed out 181 questionnaires
and 49 was returned back, a low percentage share.
Three of they who replied on the questionnaire was interested in attending a
focus group. Although it was fewer than expected who replied and wanted to
attend the focus group I consider the answers interesting and useful. The focus
group also led to a increased interest from the residents on Mobacken, who afterwards
started an association in order to take care of the existing values and
to have a discussion with the Parks departement about the development of the
area.
On the basis of the results that I recieved from the questionnaire and the focus
group I created two proposals for...
