As part of the ongoing research, the MUTUAL team has developed a statement-based elicitation method to trace the integration of economic growth within institutional routines, individual assumptions, and urban development strategies. This method has been tested and refined through individual and group discussions with political representatives and administrative staff in the cities of Freiburg (Germany) and Grenoble (France).

Cities are under pressure to be competitive, attract investment, and increase revenues. These factors significantly shape public procurement, infrastructure planning, and fiscal decision-making, yet they are rarely questioned. Market and growth logics are sensitive topics, deeply embedded in institutional frameworks and challenging to elicit through traditional interview techniques. This prompted the MUTUAL team to ask: how can we reveal these complex, often implicit rationales and potentially conflicting beliefs embedded within the city?

In elicitation research, so-called stimuli—such as texts, images, or other materials—are used during interview situations to provoke reactions and encourage interaction with the material, helping to uncover tacit knowledge that would not be verbalized otherwise (Barton, 2015). The method developed by MUTUAL is a statement-based sorting exercise inspired by previous elicitation work, including Johnson and Weller (2002), Törrönen (2002), and Barton (2015). Participants are presented with a set of carefully crafted statements covering five themes: municipal finance, procurement, economic development, infrastructure and public services, and citizen participation. When confronted with the statements, the participants are asked to explain how the statements apply to the current practices and institutional logics of their city. If time and situation allow, this is followed up by a second sort to describe the interlocutor’s vision of how the city ought to work. Participants are invited to comment on the sorting process and can also add their own statements. The moderator then follows up with tailored questions and concludes with a broader reflection on the role of economic growth in urban governance.

The initial application of the method has yielded promising results. Participants engaged actively with the statements, which opened space for critical dialogue. In Freiburg, interviews with members of the city council revealed a strong commitment to prioritizing citizens’ needs in budgeting decisions, while also acknowledging the pressure to maintain economic viability. Similar questions fueled the debate during a focus group with administrative decision-makers in Grenoble: how can the municipality guarantee the provision of basic needs when it is permanently faced with structural funding shortfalls (decreasing state allocations and local debt)? One of the city’s strategies is to implement “ecological redirection” protocols, a way of prioritizing expenditure according to the population’s needs, particularly with regard to the rehabilitation of public facilities. The participation of residents remains one of the main challenges and raises fundamental questions for the implementation of a democratic transformation.

The statements are continuously revised and refined based on our empirical work and external input. If you are interested in the current version of the statements (currently available in French and German), you can contact us: benedikt.schmid@geographie.uni-freiburg.de

Literature:

Barton, K. C. (2015). Elicitation techniques: getting people to talk about ideas they don’t usually talk about. Theory & Research in Social Education, 43(2), 179–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2015.1034392

Johnson, J.C. & Weller, S. (2002). Elicitation Techniques in Interviewing. In Handbook of Interview Research, ed. J. Gubrium and J. Holstein, 491–514. Newbury Park: Sage.

Törrönen, J. (2002). Semiotic theory on qualitative interviewing using stimulus texts. Qualitative Research, 2(3), 343–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/146879410200200304