Stakeholder Participation for Sustainable Property Development

Complexity in property development projects involves and affects stakeholders with different attributes, interests, needs and concerns. Thus, each stakeholder may influence a project negatively or positively. The literature suggests that the concepts of stakeholder, participation, social sustainability and sustainable development are intertwined and together can contribute to social change. To enhance transparency and involvement of a wide range of stakeholders, there is a need for a systematic process of stakeholder collaboration in urban property development projects. This paper describes two internal project meetings of a case study of a property development project with the aim to achieve sustainable development. Collaboration, participation and new forms of organizing are needed to achieve sustainable property development. Stakeholder participation can contribute to this by providing forums for a dialogue and interactions in projects. Furthermore, institutionalization, organisational change and commitment in project organisations are needed to safeguard good participation practice. These could be facilitated through action research-based, collaborative interventions where theory and practice contribute to desired organisational change.