Operationalization

recommendations on how community-based knowledge could be integrated into the Transition Vision to result into a more inclusive energy transition (yellow box).

As an ideal inclusive energy transition will always be an ongoing process, the input, study area, and result all seem to be part of a circular process. As communities adapt to changing conditions, community-based knowledge will always change over time. As a result, it is important to reevaluate policies continuously by analysing the current implementation plans and their effects on society, such as by assessing the level of energy justice.

environment such as housing rules, renovations in the area, housing prices and service costs.

Besides them, the researcher was able to find a lot of associations for house owners and tenants (VVE’s), which are legal entities that represent the common interest for house owners and tenants in The Netherlands. They are responsible for the maintenance of the entire buildings and are usually funded by the municipality for specific projects, such as several gas-free implementation plans.

After having conducted all the observations, the researcher continued with identifying all the stakeholders and parties involved within the Transition Vision, prior to creating the interview guidelines. Due to the several parties involved, the researcher first divided the possible respondents into 5 categories as shown in figure 5, in order to get a clear picture of which party can provide what type of information in order to answer the research question(s).

Category 1 Category 2 Category 3 Category 4 Category 5

Municipality

Policy advisers, directly working with the Transition Vision within the

Municipality of Amsterdam

Community experts

Experts that are currently working with the Transition Vision within the Bijlmer

Local executors

Local agencies executing

implementation plans for the Transition vision, such as housing cooperations, and VVE’s in the Bijlmer

Hispanic community gatekeepers Community leaders from foundations working directly with Hispanics residing in the Bijlmer

Residents

Residents from the Bijlmer that are part of the Hispanic community, and where the Transition Vision has (recently) been implemented or is being targeted from 2022

2 interviews 4 interviews 3 interviews 2 interviews 18 interviews

Figure 5. Overview of the total amount of interviews taken, divided by five categories (Author, 2022)

One of the most important categories is category 5, which will provide comprehensive data from the Hispanic community. However, categories 1 and 2 provided useful information about the creation of the Transition Vision, the reasons for its creation, and its (initial) goals. Moreover, it shed some light on how this vision is perceived, as well as some of the challenges it faces today.

Respondents from category 3 were particularly useful to answer sub-question 1 since these are the respondents that are currently carrying out the natural-gas free plans at the neighbourhood level.

The fourth category offered some insight into the Hispanic communities in Bijlmer, their

All the categories combined provided a holistic overview of the Transition Vision and how it is perceived by different actors, but specifically by the Hispanic community in the Bijlmer. This gave the researcher a good overview of which type of questions should be asked to the respondents, as their perception differs per category.

In order to prepare all the interviews, the researcher first operationalized the eight principles based on Sovacool’s framework, in order to be able to come up with core indicators that will be useful for the interview guidelines. This study focuses only on the two main principles of the Transition Vision (affordability, and cooperation and coordination with neighbourhoods), which is why the researcher only operationalizing four of the eight concepts of Sovacool’s framework. As a result, the following elements that are being studied, listing Sovacool’s principles into concepts, the indicators and the way of measuring are shown in figure 6.

Figure 6. Overview of the operationalization of the concepts from Sovacool’s principles into useful indicators, used for this study (author, 2022).

After having the correct interview guidelines, indicators and list of useful respondents, the researcher continued with approaching the right respondents and conducting all the 29 interviews.

Through interviews from several Hispanics, experts and policy documents, the researcher was able to identify the specific plans that are currently being implemented, related to affordability and cooperation with neighbourhoods within Hispanic communities. Appendix A provides an overview of all the interview guidelines used for this research, per category. Luckily, this went quite smooth, as the researcher took an active approach in connecting with the communities and active actors in the Bijlmer. The researcher also had the opportunity to give a short radio interview (in Spanish), through an Amsterdam-based radio station in the Bijlmer (El Vacilón Musical Amsterdam Latino), that caters to Spanish speakers (especially Hispanics) in order to raise awareness of this topic and explain the future plans of the Transition Vision. Additionally, the researcher actively approached Hispanic residents from the Bijlmer to reach out to her if they were willing to talk with her regarding her current research. Within this period of actively looking for respondents, the researcher started interviewing some energy experts, urban stakeholders, urban planners and community leaders to get familiar with the activities within the neighbourhoods.

Through them, she easily got connected to Hispanics in the Bijlmer and focused for three weeks fully on interviewing residents. During all this time, she also took the role of observer while joining bottom-up initiatives from the community or attending participation meetings, as mentioned before in section 2.3.4. (data collection). All these interviews and observations led to answering the second sub-question (divided by three smaller questions):

2. How does the Transition Vision relate to the perception of people from the Hispanic community?

2.1. To what extent is affordability a challenge within Hispanic communities in the Bijlmer?

2.2. To what extent is cooperation and coordination with neighbourhoods a challenge within Hispanic communities in the Bijlmer?

2.3. What are the main factors influencing the perception of Hispanics in the Bijlmer regarding the Transition Vision?

Respondents from Hispanic communities (category 5) were particularly useful in answering this

Additionally, respondents from category 4 were extremely helpful in providing a general overview of the history and characteristics of Hispanics in the Bijlmer. By analysing these answers, the correct data was obtained for question 2.3 to understand what factors might affect the perception of the Transition Vision. This sub-question was added later, as these factors appeared to play a significant role and came up repeatedly during the interviews.

The last sub-question:

3. How can community-based knowledge that Hispanic communities possess, regarding affordability and cooperation, be integrated into planning policies in order to create a more inclusive energy transition?

was obtained from different sources. Through grounded literature review on the topic of energy justice, energy transition and energy policies within communities, the researcher was able to identify the benefits of adapting urban policies by adding community-based knowledge (Verbong

& Loorbach, D, 2012). Even the Transition Vision itself mentions the importance of adding community-based knowledge through close citizen involvement to improve the Dutch energy transition (Over Morgen, 2020, p. 46). Further, the researcher asked every single respondent what they thought needed to be adjusted or changed to make affordability and cooperation within Hispanic communities more successful. The next chapter, provides the answer to this last question, along with a policy brief that may contain useful suggestions for policy-makers and urban planners on how to integrate community-based knowledge into planning policies.

After conducting all the interviews, the researcher continued to analyse all the data. The analysis was conducted using a thematic framework. Using the program ATLAS.ti, the data obtained from the interviews was translated into key themes. This program allowed the researcher to identify key themes based on the concepts included in the operationalization. Through an open coding process, this generated an extensive coding list with all the significant themes. Through axial coding, these themes were reduced, and some related ones were merged together. In the last phase of selective coding, the researcher was able to select the final themes (codes) that represent the indicators and concepts for this research. A schematic overview of these themes can be found in appendix B.

The interviews were all recorded and successfully imported into ATLAS.ti. This made the coding process much easier for the researcher. All respondents were willing to give permission for recording due to a high level of trust between them and the researcher. The used consent form for all participants can be found in appendix C. To get the best and most complete recordings, the researcher always conducted the interviews online or inside a place familiar and trustful to the respondent, with little or no background noise. As the interviews were conducted in three different languages (Spanish, Dutch, and English), the coding process was sometimes challenging.

Respondents sometimes used different languages within the same interview. This had to do with the fact that some terms and expressions within this theme, are only used in Dutch such as

“Transitievisie warmte (Transition Vision)”, “warmtenetten (heat networks)”, and “Wijken Aardgasvrij Maken (WAM) aanpak” (Make Neighbourhoods Natural Gas Free' (WAM approach)”, to name a view. As Dutch municipalities always communicate formally (e.g. through letters) in Dutch, this has resulted in residents sometimes speaking both Spanish and Dutch at the same time. As the researcher is fluent in both languages, this did not hinder the coding phase in interpreting the data correctly.

During the selective coding process, it appeared that some common characteristics were often repeated by the respondents of category 5 (Hispanics). These characteristics were linked with factors that could influence the perception of Hispanics towards the Transition Vision. As these factors were identified by the researcher at the final stage of the analysis, they have been given a place within the research (as this answers the sub-question 2.3) but they do not make up a large part of the overall research. However, they were useful to exemplify certain statements and some influential factors that may also be relevant or present in other marginalized communities, as this aligns with some findings from the literature of Bongers et al. (2000).

To conclude, all the operationalized sub codes, were finally merged into one of the 2 main principles (affordability and cooperation and coordination), and through these concepts, this research was successfully able to analyse and give answer to all the sub-questions, and finally the main research question:

To what extent does Amsterdam’s transition vision for heat support affordability and cooperation with neighbourhoods within Hispanic communities in the Bijlmer?

The next chapter will give an analytical overview of the answers to all the (sub)questions, and will bring the main conclusions of this study together at the end of the chapter.