The Dutch Utrecht City Project (UCP) will have to compete with other, high-quality shopping, office conference and recreation centres far into the 21st century. Physically, a great deal is done to increase the UCP accessibility. Nevertheless, its accessibility from the customer's perspective remains underexposed, while the UCP success will only be determined by the customer. In a context of decreasing mobility, the accessibility quality will become an increasingly important selling point for UCP. Accessibility problems are currently viewed by the partners from the perspective of physical accessibility, image, and the decision-making quality. There are two critical success factors. Firstly, will the UCP partners be able to combine their collective and individual interests in the long term in which UCP will be realized? Secondly, will they be able to come to an agreement in the short term about the conditions under which they can shape their joint interests in the long term? During talks, it emerged that there is sufficient strategic perspective concerning these success factors. The key is to ensure the UCP accessibility from the customer friendly service point of view rather than just from an urban development and traffic perspective. One of the conditions stipulated by the UPC partners is that `the old should not be thrown out before we have the new'. (A)
Abstract