Participation with YourView: collecting responses on a large scale in a short time for the N279

After a large-scale visual and functional update, the digital communication and participation platform YourView has been used successfully several times in the past period. One of these was the N279 Veghel-Asten project.

The N279 is an important and busy connection in East Brabant. Witteveen+Bos is assisting the province of North Brabant in an exploratory study to improve accessibility, liveability and safety on and around the N279 between Veghel and Asten.

YourView: addition to traditional participation strategies

To involve the surrounding area, various participation tools are being used, including YourView. Witteveen+Bos' digital participation and communication platform is an addition to traditional participation strategies. Within YourView, people can think along via an online map. A low-threshold way of participating to gain new insights and facilitate and encourage involvement.

In this project, visitors to the platform left suggestions and points of interest on the map. These responses are visible to all visitors. The input helps the project team to map bottlenecks, identify a wide range of solution directions and know the wishes from the environment.

Marijn Alders, environment manager of the province of Noord-Brabant: ‘In the N279 project, we experienced that InBeeld is valuable for collecting reactions from the environment in a short time and within a large area. In this case, we were dealing with a 34 km stretch of road with more than 200,000 inhabitants. A nice plus is that YourView could be fully integrated as a participation tool in our website www.brabant.nl/N279'.

Collecting feedback with YourView

Over 300 responses were collected via YourView. The responses focused both on improving road safety and suggestions for improving liveability along the N279. The responses also contained important knowledge about values, interests and developments in the area. ‘YourView also helps us and our partners to get an even better picture of the area's sentiments on certain problems and solution directions,’ says the environment manager.

In addition to its efforts on the N279, InBeeld has recently contributed to other projects, including a study on the level of noise nuisance perception of the Westerwoldse Aa bridge in Bad Nieuweschans and a traffic study in Zutphen. Also in projects on Texel and in Schiedam, YourView shows that digital participation can be used to effectively and in-depth dialogue with the environment.