Years ago, it was none other than BPD—the biggest competitor of Pim van Meer’s employer—that introduced community participation as one of the five points of MiniGIM. It didn’t make it into the final version, but they were right. “To be fair,” Pim admits.
Some issues are too important to be treated as a competition. Neighborhood participation is one of them. Not because developers are generally doing a poor job of it. That’s too simplistic—and it’s not true. In many projects, participation is handled quite well. Sometimes even very well.
But that’s exactly where the problem lies: sometimes.
If effective neighborhood participation depends on the specific developer, consultant, seniority, or personal convictions of those at the table, then it is not yet a mature approach. It is a matter of craftsmanship, but not yet a system. And the challenges we now face require more than just random expertise.
MiniBIM has clarified the language used between developers and clients. Together with housing authorities and investors, we’re constantly working to better align our understanding of the same information, the same assumptions, and the same threshold values. MiniGIM does something similar at the front end of area development: between municipalities and area developers. What are the minimum required analyses? Which map layers belong to a given area? What information must be available to have a mature discussion about feasibility, preconditions, and quality?
Now that MiniGIM is moving toward its first 1.0 version through the DMI ecosystem on behalf of municipalities, it’s a logical time to take the next step. After all, if we’re getting better and better at organizing financial, spatial, and technical information needs, why should we continue to treat social information needs as an afterthought?
An area development doesn’t just result in a development project. It isn’t just a three-dimensional model. It isn’t just a municipal analysis map. Ultimately, an area development takes root in a neighborhood.
I spoke with Frank van Ballegooyen of Smarticipatie about this. Frank has been involved in community participation for years and uses digitalization not as a gimmick, but as a tool to facilitate better, earlier, and broader conversations. What struck me during that conversation was that two worlds are beginning to converge.
On the one hand, the world of MiniBIM and MiniGIM: standardizing the bare minimum needed to make better decisions. On the other hand, the world of digital participation: making residents’ knowledge, concerns, opportunities, sentiments, and local logic visible earlier in the process.
Frank actually said something very simple: “Good participation doesn’t start with persuasion. Good participation starts with listening, setting boundaries, and providing honest feedback.” That sounds almost too simple, but that’s exactly where things often go wrong.
Because participation is still too often seen as an afterthought. A meeting. A report. A project page. A mandatory part of the process. Sometimes well-intentioned, sometimes professionally executed, and sometimes just because it has to be done.
But mature neighborhood participation is something else entirely.
That means starting early enough—not just when the design is already set in stone. It means not only listening to the people who speak up loudly, but also giving the silent majority a voice. It means that in-person meetings and digital participation reinforce each other. It means that comments don’t disappear into a folder, but are linked to location, theme, design choices, and feedback.
Frank gave an example in which in-person conversations, focus groups, and online participation were brought together in a single dashboard. Not as an end in itself, but to highlight where concerns lay, where opportunities existed, and which parts of a plan could still be influenced. That last point is essential. People don’t always have to get their way. But they do need to be able to see that their input has been seriously considered.
That’s where I see maturity. It lies in repeatability. In transparency. In making social assumptions explicit.
Who is currently using this space? Who feels a sense of ownership over this area? Where is there legitimate resistance? Which concerns are based on misunderstandings? Which concerns are, unfortunately, justified? Where can the design be improved by incorporating local knowledge? And how will we later demonstrate what we’ve done with that input?
That’s a serious challenge. If we want to accelerate progress, we mustn’t treat the neighborhood as a hindrance. The neighborhood is a source of information—sometimes critical, sometimes emotional, sometimes unreasonable, but often surprisingly spot-on about what we, as professionals, fail to see in time.
Following MiniGIM 1.0, I believe this is the next step: no longer treating neighborhood participation as a procedural requirement, but as a mature component of area development.
Not because it sounds nice. But because it improves the plans.
About Pims Digital Maze
In this column, Pim takes you on a journey through the sometimes wondrous, confusing, yet rapidly changing world of digital transformation. He draws on his experiences as Director of Digital Transformation at VORM. Pim is outspoken and critical, but above all, he wants to help you. Are you stuck in the digital maze? Pim will help you find your way out…. Do you have a question for Pim or want to get in touch with him? Follow Pim on LinkedIn. You can find previous episodes here.
