The challenges of an area director

[Source:Brink.co.uk] Imagine a serious game. The game board consists of a map with six adjacent municipalities. Players choose different roles, for example as a municipality, company or resident. The goal is not for one party to win, but for all parties to agree on the ultimate division of space. But that is not easy: the space is already built up, while the population is growing. And as each new neighborhood is built, there must also be room for more businesses, to keep the balance right. Only if players work well together, and thus do not only pursue their own self-interest, can they win the game.

Your role in this game: that of an independent advisor managing the process.

If a play were ever to be made of Birgit Hopff’s work, it would go something like this. As area director for business parks in the Leiden region, she is involved in implementing Key Region Leiden’s spatial strategy for business parks. This partnership includes representatives of six municipalities, entrepreneurs and educational institutions to strengthen the region’s economy, including by improving business parks and providing space for new and innovative companies.

In practice, however, the region runs into challenges that complicate this fine ambition. “There is simply a shortage of space,” said Birgit. “Thanks to this partnership, there is now a regional approach to this. Municipalities first look within their own borders for opportunities to create business activity, if that fails, they may also look at another municipality.”

Connections

In her day-to-day work, Birgit is mainly busy bringing parties together to see how they can best join forces. “The region has the ambition to drive the knowledge economy, but in order to make it happen, it is important that everyone sits around the table with each other. The topic of conversation should be: how can we together realize this ambition? My role is to bring parties together, across municipal boundaries, ensuring that the Key Region Leiden spatial strategy is actually implemented.”

An additional challenge for companies in the region, is that it is quite complicated to find space for new business parks anymore. Birgit: “And so we have to look for other solutions. I therefore believe that in the future we will also have to look more at high-rise buildings and stacking functions on business parks, but there is still some resistance to that at the moment.”

Kentering

Since Birgit started as area director three years ago, she has seen a turnaround in the way the various parties work together. “It’s really a matter of getting and staying in touch with each other. You see that some entrepreneurs don’t really care much about such a region at first, and that’s understandable. Think of a cleaning company, for example: what does the transition to a knowledge economy mean for such an entrepreneur? If you sit down at the table, you do come up with business opportunities that such a thing offers, for example, in offering specialized cleaning services for laboratories. What I learned particularly during the implementation of this vision is how important it is to include everyone at the front end. After all, you are dealing with different parties, with conflicting interests. The earlier you involve them in the process, the smoother the implementation of such a program will go.”

Serious game

An important lesson Birgit has learned in this partnership: “In essence, it often comes down to working on mutual relationships. If several parties have to work together and there are conflicting interests, the main focus is often on the hard agreements. But at least as important is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, to understand why another party attaches so much value to a certain aspect of the cooperation. Then you come to an agreement much sooner.”

To map out this complexity and help parties learn to understand each other, Birgit, together with Brink colleagues, Felixx Landscape Architects and PosadMaxwan as partners, developed a serious game as part of the so-called Handreiking clusters of large-scale business locations, commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning. Birgit: “A role-playing game can work very well to bring companies, governments and developers to the table to discuss wishes for the development of new business parks. The best joint result is not achieved by pulling out all the stops, but rather by really learning to understand each other.”

Her ambition for the coming years? “Within Key Region Leiden we are now investigating whether we can set up a spatial development company business parks (ROM-B), an investment fund to revitalize, intensify and make existing business parks more sustainable. There are quite a few outdated business parks in the region. Such an investment fund would not only refurbish these sites, but could also provide substantially more square meters of business space. We are currently investigating the feasibility of this initiative. The ROM-B has now been recognized as a priority project within Holland Rhineland’s Regional Investment Agenda. For further realization, we will eventually also need the support of both the province and the state. But only when there are the necessary signatures under this can we really start taking big steps.”