**4. Materials and Methods**

This paper aims to understand the planning process of Santa Cruz Verde 2030 from a stakeholder perspective. There is a research gap in local perceptions of megaprojects in general [9]. However, the question of which stakeholder groups are relevant for large-scale urban development projects has already been addressed by several authors, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view [32,58,59].

For our study, we chose to follow the CABERNET (Concerted Action on Brownfield and Economic Regeneration Network) stakeholder model [60] to identify different local experts. CABERNET is a European scientific platform that aims to facilitate the development and reuse of brownfield areas. This stakeholder model entails both primary and secondary actors. The projects' initiators or responsible planners are primary stakeholders because they actively shape the project. Contrary to that, secondary stakeholders influence and are influenced by the project, "but are not directly involved in it" [9] (p. 4). We selected actors from both stakeholder groups (see Figure 4) to seize different perceptions of the megaproject.


**Figure 4.** Interviewees and their professions. Own elaboration.

The representative of Santa Cruz's urban planning office is a primary stakeholder because the public planning authority is a mayor institution based on the public–private partnership announced by CEPSA and the town hall [4]. However, this person did not initiate the megaproject because of a change in the local government in June 2019 (see Figure 3). We also contacted primary stakeholders that were responsible for the elaboration of the plan Santa Cruz Verde 2030 in the first place such as CEPSA and the responsible politicians from Coalición Canaria and Partido Popular. Their opinion is essential in order to contrast both internal and external points of view. Unfortunately, they were not willing to take part in the investigation at this point. Consequently, our results are limited to some extent because they lack this point of view.

Apart from that, several secondary stakeholders such as neighborhood associations and real estate experts were willing to participate. The interviewees were chosen by means of online desktop research, based on the stakeholder groups identified by CABERNET [60] (p. 20). Some of them were selected due to their profession, others because they had joined the public discussion and commented on the megaproject in newspaper articles and interviews. We conducted five qualitative interviews in summer 2019 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife (see Figure 4). All of the interviewees were interested in receiving the results of our research, which will help to add our findings to the local discourse.

The research method we propose is a semi-structured interview as one type of qualitative expert interview [61] (p. 418). It consists of key questions [62] (p. 291) which allows us to delve deep into social matters [63] (p. 315). The guideline helps to stick to the topics that were indicated as relevant for our research interest. Moreover, it provides comparability between the interviews. However, still, it depends on how the question is put forward [64] (p. 755). Semi-structured interviews also enable the interviewer to drop questions that do not lead to the aimed output while others can be added spontaneously [63] (p. 316). This puts the interviewees in the position to follow aspects that they consider to be important [64] (p. 755) [65] (p. 179), which is fundamental with regard to the aim of this research.

The objective is to understand the perception of the stakeholders. This requires a certain openness of the questions and the conversation, as the interviewer might not consider each relevant aspect in advance with the prepared questions. The aim is to address both the internal expertise in the professional field of work of each expert but also the capacity to reflect these aspects [66] (p. 31). We regard semi-structured interviews as an instrument not only to understand stakeholders' opinions but also the logics behind the social constructs they explain [67].

Our guideline consists of several thematic blocks that slightly differ from interviewee to interviewee, depending on each professional context. The interviews with real estate experts of course put a stronger focus on the local housing market compared to the interview with the representative of the planning office and so forth. Nevertheless, the basic structure of each guideline remained the same based on the main topics discussed in Section 2 (such as "the image of the project", "the perception of the ongoing planning process" and "the relationship between project and city"). Each topic is introduced with an open and more general question that stimulates the interviewee to narrate (for example, "How do you perceive the project Santa Cruz Verde 2030?") [65]. After that, we used follow-up questions to maintain the topic or comprehension questions to dive deeper into it [64] (p. 758). The interviews were held in Spanish and recorded after the stakeholders gave permission. The material was treated according to the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union [68,69].

We transcribed the material using the software F4 and analyzed it with MAXQDA. A qualitative content analysis is the basis of our research. This means that the material is analyzed step by step putting the "categories in the center" [70] (p. 3). This procedure is systematic and requires developing one part of the categories with the material [71] (p. 2). The code system was set up with a mixed approach. While some of the codes were already defined due to theory and the interview guideline (deductive, for example, "urban context", "post crisis", "uses in the megaproject"), the code system was complemented by the material itself (inductive) [72] (p. 64). This applies to codes such as "level of information"


or "political dimension of monument preservation" because these aspects have not been on our agenda previously. Our main categories are shown in Figure 5.

**Figure 5.** Main categories and subcategories in the qualitative analysis. Own elaboration.

On that basis, we defined subcategories [73] (p. 96) to complete the code system, although we omitted third-level categories for reasons of clarity in Figure 5. The result is a matrix composed of topics in columns and interviewees in rows which leads to concrete text passages in the cells. This matrix can be interpreted focusing on certain interviewees or categories but also allows us to compare the cases with each other [72] (p. 50). For this paper, we put the focus on the main categories "urban development", "Santa Cruz Verde 2030" and "sustainability". These categories were directly related to our paper's topic.
