Assessment methodStakeholder Urban Policies Role-Play Exercise

Students are assigned a stakeholder and they represent that particular stakeholder for two weeks. The scenario is a potential eviction of residents living in a slum in Kampala, Uganda since a developer wants to build a new development in a section of that piece of land. There are about eight stakeholders involved and they need to negotiate what is going to happen (if the families will be evicted or not). Stakeholders need to form alliances and convince other stakeholders to follow their plan. In this role-play students learn to position themselves in the roles of different stakeholders, develop strategies for negotiation and decision-making and need to be able to identify interests, goals and power hold by each stakeholder. Effective written and verbal communication, and critical understanding of power mechanisms as well as urban policies are developed in this exercise real life exercise. 

The class carries out a role-play exercise in two 3-hour sessions.

The aim of the exercise is to analyse the roles played by different stakeholders and negotiate solutions for the scenario presented for the exercise. All members of the group should contribute to the elaboration of the four items for submission and should actively participate in the role-play.

Students will form groups of 5 to 6 members (about 8 groups in total). Prior to the role-play, each group will be given a role to play representing a stakeholder (i.e. private sector, local government, slum dwellers, etc.) when discussing the case study (Lecture 5).

Some preparation is done before each session. Before session 1, students will prepare their position towards the problem (which will be presented in Session 1) and will make a stakeholder analysis to identify their 'allies' and 'enemies'. The written statement of the position and the stakeholder analysis are both presented (and will be marked). The aim of session 1 is for each group to understand the position of the other stakeholders (what they are planning to do) and identify possible actions.

In the second session the negotiation among stakeholders takes place in order to get to a final decision about the problem. In the last 30 minutes of this session there is a reflection on how the whole exercise went. After session 2, each group has to submit a revision of the first stakeholder analysis and a written reflection on the negotiation process.