Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Public Participation: A Learning Model Approach

Abstract

There exists a gap between the quality of public participation practices experienced by communities and the quality they expect. This paper presents the theory and case study of applying a learning model to a transportation project to help close that gap. Such learning models are widely used in other public sector realms, but heretofore not applied to transportation planning projects. Through application of this approach, residents of the community were able to specify purpose and need outcomes that were not anticipated by the agency. Further, these qualitative outcomes were able to be evaluated quantitatively by the community and incorporated into the overall assessment of alternatives. As a result, the desired process outcome of partnership was more fully realized for this project.