The significance of early and continuous involvement of the citizens in city development processes is clearly evident in the current critical reporting on Stuttgart 21 in Germany, a traffic and urban development project to relocate the Stuttgart railway junction. Stuttgart 21, a planning process for a new major train station that has gone on for over ten years, has been accompanied by a citizen protest movement across all party lines since 2009. Construction has been halted several times.
When citizens are consulted too late, not at all or only intermittently during the development process, the results are often the most varied protests and demonstrations.
This research project analyzes methods of citizen involvement in construction planning processes in Hamburg and attempts to identify new approaches to qualitative social research as expert research actions in function of deep drilling. The aim is the development and testing of a new methodology for active citizenship in terms of an expert research like deep drilling instead of working under the involvement of the majority.