Evaluation of “the social” in megaprojects: tensions, dichotomies, and ambiguities

The existing approaches to megaproject evaluation have overwhelmingly concentrated on the “iron triangle” criteria of delivering projects on time, within budget, and to predefined project specifications, while the evaluation of the social aspects has received little attention. When “the social” is addressed, it is often done under the denomination “socio-economic”, with emphasis on “the economic” and on the “objective” side of the social, measured through quantitative indicators. This paper contributes to filling this gap by exploring a number of dilemmas and tensions that pose challenges to the evaluation of the social in megaproject governance. These relate to the nature of “the social”; stakeholder participation; the relationships between consensus and conflict; the role of evaluation in governance; uncertainty; and the temporal and spatial scales of governance. The article briefly examines environmental justice and territorially sustainable development as potentially fruitful approaches to the evaluation of the social in megaprojects, and suggests ways forward towards bridging the key dichotomies.