Comparative qualitative and quantitative research

Detailed qualitative case studies will provide depth into the analysis and quantitative GIS approach will provide width. The former will describe and analyze 8 “densification stories” in 2 countries: Switzerland and the Netherlands. The empirical evidence collected in these subcases will be put into perspective with the GIS analysis. The latter’s innovative contribution will be to capture the socio-political and economic dimensions of densification in the regions studied. A case study is “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between the phenomenon and the context are not clearly evident” (Yin 2009:18). Comparative case study analysis is connected to relational approaches in urban studies (Robinson 2016, Ward 2010) aiming to identify similarities or differences in transnational patterns of policy implementation in densification projects. Case study analysis also aims at generalization. Generalization is not obtained through testing a hypothesis for general statistical significance. Research hypotheses (§2.3.3) postulate causal mechanisms that are investigated in the light of the empirical material collected in carefully selected cases (Yin 2009). Potential for generalization results from the identified causal mechanisms, the relevance of which is expected to be broader than in the analyzed cases.