ABSTRACT
This chapter will present an attempt to measure the public consensus around two cases: the runway extension of Groningen Airport Eelde (GAE) and the Hanze Railway Route (HRR). The public consisted of local residents living near to the projected route or area as proposed by the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management. Both cases have been selected from a list of mainly regional scale infrastructure projects that did not feature any special participatory or consensus-oriented planning approaches. In this way, the projects are fairly typical for conventional Dutch infrastructure development processes. Measuring a consensus in these projects is important to get an understanding of how a consensus may be compounded. It is assumed that knowing the consensus for a certain topic is a daunting task in itself. For consensus planning, the ‘ordinary’ citizen can be important, particularly with regard to the reasons why they take a position as an opponent or proponent. This underlying information may make clear whether consensus planning should emphasise process or product when dealing with residents.
