Problem statement
The problem statement is the shortest argument in your report, and the one everything else leans on. Your questions, methods, vision and strategy all have to answer it. If your reader does not believe the problem, nothing that follows will persuade them.
A problem statement is a short text, of a few hundred words, that explains a problem in your region and why it needs research. It compares what is happening with what should happen, according to a goal, a rule or a right that your reader recognises.
It answers five questions:
- 1What should happen?
- 2Where does it go wrong, and who is affected?
- 3Who decides?
- 4Why do current solutions not work, and what do we still not know?
- 5What happens if nothing changes?
Our definition for this course, building on the distinction between a condition and its cost in Booth et al. (2016). The five questions return as the five moves in step 4. If the goal itself is part of the problem, say whose goal it is and who was left out when it was set.
This page proposes a way of writing one in six steps. Steps 1 to 3 explore the problem before you draft the statement: what is going wrong, whose problem it is, and where. Steps 4 and 5 turn what you found into a short text and test it. Step 6 turns the problem into your objectives, your pathway and a first research question. Every step ends with something you write down. The examples come from the Q3 studio brief: the spatial consequences of the energy transition in Dutch regions.
Where it sits in your report
Your quarter guide lists the elements of the research plan with letters. The problem statement is element e. It comes after an in-depth introduction to the issue and its context (d), and before your objectives (f) and research questions (g). Its job is to summarise the issue you tackle, so it is short. The introduction carries the detail; the problem statement carries the argument.
On this site the same block is Report part 09. Chapter 7 of the Guide to Effective Report Writing in Urbanism (Rocco & Gonçalves, 2025) covers it, and Design your methodology, link 1 shows a worked example on South Holland. This page does not repeat that example: it shows you how to build your own.
Spot the problem behind the symptoms
After the excursion your notebook is full of symptoms: a sign announcing a solar park on a field, a business park that cannot get a grid connection, a petition against a new high-voltage line, a terraced street where people keep the heating low. Symptoms are evidence. A problem appears when you can say what produces them and what they cost, and to whom.
Booth et al. (2016) distinguish a practical problem, a condition in the world that costs someone something, from a research problem, something we do not understand well enough, whose cost is that we cannot act well on the first. A planning and design report needs both. The practical problem gives your work its stakes. The research problem gives it a reason to do research before it designs.
Something in the world is going wrong, and it costs someone something.
Firms and new housing areas in [region] cannot be connected to the grid (condition). Homes and jobs are delayed, and the transition stalls where it was meant to start (cost).
Something we do not understand well enough, and what that ignorance costs.
We do not know how residents value the fields now earmarked for a substation and solar park (gap). So siting decisions are made without the knowledge that could make them fair and durable (consequence).
Invented example, written for this page. Sourced facts are cited; anything marked H is a hypothesis you would have to test.
Sort what you saw into causes (roots), one core problem (trunk) and effects (branches). The tool comes from development practice, where groups build it together on sticky notes and keep rearranging it as they argue (Hovland, 2005). Do the same with your group. Open any card to see the evidence it would need.
S · source = sourced fact H · hypothesis to test = what you will have to find out. The causes marked S come from the Tweede Kamer explainer on grid congestion (Tweede Kamer, 2024).
New firms and new housing areas cannot always be connected.S · Tweede Kamer, 2024+
Local energy initiatives wait while large projects go ahead.H · hypothesis to test+
Residents experience the transition as something done to them, and oppose the next project.H · hypothesis to test+
Regional targets slip.H · hypothesis to test+
The grid was built mainly for drawing power, not for feeding in power from solar and wind.S · Tweede Kamer, 2024+
Solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps and charging points grew faster than grid operators had calculated.S · Tweede Kamer, 2024+
Between 2010 and 2020, operators focused on low costs and invested too little.S · Tweede Kamer, 2024+
Search areas for energy projects are chosen mainly where space and grid capacity can be found.H · hypothesis to test+
Invented example, written for this page. Sourced facts are cited; anything marked H is a hypothesis you would have to test.
Four statements about energy poverty in a Limburg town. Place each one in a tree, then open.
“In 2024, 13.4% of households in Heerlen lived in energy poverty, the highest share in the Netherlands.”Think first, then open +
It depends on your tree. As an indicator it is an effect (a branch) of something else: housing quality, incomes, energy prices. It becomes part of the trunk only once you say what produces it. Source: CBS (2025).
“Many homes in the area were built before insulation standards existed.”Think first, then open +
A cause, if you can show it. Here it is a hypothesis: check the age of the housing stock and its energy labels before you write it as fact.
“Households keep the heating low and fall behind on their bills.”Think first, then open +
An effect people live with. Street and in-depth interviews (Sessions 01 and 05) are how you find out whether, where and for whom it happens.
“Insulation subsidies reach owner-occupiers more easily than tenants.”Think first, then open +
A cause that is also a governance question: who can use an instrument decides who benefits from it. A strong root, if your policy analysis supports it.
Ask whose problem it is
No problem reaches you raw. By the time you read about it in a policy document, someone has already decided what kind of problem it is, and so what kind of answer it needs. Bacchi (2009) turns this into a method: instead of asking how to solve a policy problem, ask what the problem is represented to be, what that representation takes for granted and what it leaves unsaid. Rittel and Webber (1973) made the planning version of the point: for wicked problems, formulating the problem already points towards a solution.
Siting · “Where can the region fit its share of renewable electricity?”+
This framing points to: a search-area map and a ranking of locations.
It hides: who lives there, what they value, who gains. Regional energy strategies have concentrated largely on finding locations (Kempenaar et al., 2021).
Acceptance · “How do we overcome local resistance?”+
This framing points to: information evenings, compensation, better visualisations.
It hides: the possibility that residents are right. People become an obstacle to manage. Watch for the Dutch policy word draagvlak (public support).
Distribution · “Who carries the costs, and who receives the benefits?”+
This framing points to: local ownership, benefit sharing, a different spread of sites. National agreements aim for half of new onshore wind and solar production to be locally owned (Rijksoverheid, 2019).
It hides: who took the decision, and whose ways of valuing the landscape count.
Procedure and recognition · “Who drew the map, and whose valued places were counted?”+
This framing points to: deliberative arenas, community mapping, design ateliers that come before the map is drawn.
It hides: costs and benefits, if you stop at process. Pair it with distribution.
The last two framings use the three tenets of energy justice: distribution, recognition and procedure (Jenkins et al., 2016). A just transition asks the same questions of the whole move away from fossil energy, not of one project only (McCauley & Heffron, 2018). Use them to read your policy documents and to write your own framing.
Whose identities, histories and valued places are taken into account, and whose are ignored?
Who decides, when, with what information, and who can contest the decision?
Three sentences of the kind you will find in regional policy documents. Invented for this page.
“Public support (draagvlak) is the main risk for timely delivery of the projects.”Think first, then open +
Delay is the problem, and residents are its cause. Ask who wrote this, and what it would take for residents to be partners rather than a risk.
“The region has identified twelve search areas with a combined potential of 1.2 TWh.”Think first, then open +
Space is the problem, and a map is the answer. Useful information, but it says nothing about who lives in the twelve areas.
“Half of the revenue of new projects should stay in the area that hosts them.”Think first, then open +
Costs and benefits are the problem. Good. Now ask who decided which area hosts what.
Pin it to place, scale and time
The Q3 studio works across three scales. Energy problems almost always cross them: decided at one, felt at another, and rarely negotiated in between. That mismatch is often the problem itself. Your statement must say where each part of the problem sits.
scale
Who decides here. Ministries, the national grid operator TenneT, developers.
scale
Who decides here. Provinces, municipalities and water boards (through the RES), cooperatives, residents’ associations, farmers.
scale
Who decides here. Landowners, the municipality, the grid operator, neighbours, schools.
Invented example, written for this page. Sourced facts are cited; anything marked H is a hypothesis you would have to test.
The route of a new 380 kV high-voltage line.Think first, then open +
High-voltage projects of national importance are usually coordinated by central government with the national grid operator. The people who live along the route meet the decision at S. Ask where M was in between.
A 30-hectare solar park on farmland.Think first, then open +
Municipalities and provinces decide through plans and permits, within the regional energy strategy. National policy adds a preference order, the zonneladder: roofs first, then unused land in built-up areas, then combinations of uses, so that farmland and nature are spared where possible (Rijksoverheid, n.d.).
Taking a neighbourhood off natural gas.Think first, then open +
Municipal heat plans set the order of neighbourhoods. The cost and disruption land in individual homes, which is why tenants, owners and housing associations can experience the same plan very differently.
Say when the problem matters. Three clocks are usually running at once.
- The target clock. The Dutch Climate Act now requires a 55% cut in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990, and net zero by 2050 (IPLO, n.d.).
- The decision clock. The next plan, permit or vote that will settle part of the problem. A problem with a decision date is a problem someone can still act on.
- The memory clock. A region’s past with energy shapes how it reads the next project. The parliamentary inquiry into gas extraction concluded that the interests of the people of Groningen had been structurally ignored (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen, 2023). A problem statement about new energy infrastructure in the north that leaves this out has missed part of its problem.
Write it in five moves
Now write. The five moves are the ones you met in Design your methodology, where you read them in the South Holland example. Here you build your own, one move at a time. Each move has a job, sentence starters, an invented Q3 example and the slip students most often make.
1The commitment+
Its job. Start from a goal your reader already accepts. The tension you reveal then becomes a gap in a shared promise, which is harder to dismiss than a complaint.
Common slip. Opening with “Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time.” It is true, and it tells the reader nothing about your region.
2The uneven geography+
Its job. Show where the commitment lands, and that it lands unevenly: in which places, on which people, with which costs and benefits.
Common slip. Describing the site in detail without saying who gains and who loses.
3The people who decide+
Its job. Name the arena: who decided what, when, and with which instrument. This is where governance enters your problem.
Common slip. Writing “the government” as if it were one actor. Ministries, provinces, municipalities, water boards and grid operators want different things.
4The gap+
Its job. Say what current responses fail to do (a policy gap) and what we do not yet know (a knowledge gap). This is the move that justifies research, the one Swales (1990) calls establishing a niche.
Common slip. “There is a lack of research on this topic.” Say which research exists and what it does not tell us.
5The risk and the call+
Its job. Say what happens if nothing changes, and for whom. End on what your project sets out to do, which leads straight into your objectives.
Common slip. Ending with a design (“we will build an energy hub”) before the reader knows what it would answer.
The Netherlands is legally bound to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 55% by 2030 compared with 1990, and to reach net zero by 2050 (IPLO, n.d.). Thirty energy regions are expected to generate at least 35 TWh of renewable electricity on land by 2030 (VNG, 2025).
In [region], the search areas for a solar park and a new substation lie on farmland at the edge of [village]. The electricity grid is congested, so new firms and housing areas cannot always be connected (Tweede Kamer, 2024). The landscape changes locally, while most of the electricity, and most of the revenue, leaves the area [H: check who owns the planned projects].
The search areas were drawn in the Regional Energy Strategy, prepared jointly by the province, municipalities and water boards with their partners (VNG, 2025). Residents of [village] were consulted after the search areas had been published [H: check the RES 1.0 and council minutes].
National agreements aim for half of new onshore wind and solar production to be locally owned (Rijksoverheid, 2019), yet [region] has no instrument that links where infrastructure goes to what the hosting community receives [H]. Research has examined regional design ateliers as arenas for regional energy choices (Kempenaar et al., 2021); less is known about how hosting communities value the landscapes they are asked to give up [check against your literature review].
If siting continues to be treated as a search for free space, the region may meet its targets by concentrating the burdens on the communities with the least say, and feed the opposition that slows the next project. This project therefore sets out to understand how [community] values its landscape, and to design an energy landscape in which burdens, benefits and decisions are shared.
Invented example. The bracketed notes are what you would still have to check. In your report they disappear: either the evidence is there, or the sentence is rewritten as a hypothesis your research will test.
Aim for 200 to 400 words. That is our advice, not a rule of the guide: the introduction (d) carries the detail, so the statement can stay sharp.
Every factual sentence has a source. Use at least one scholarly source and one policy or data source. Mark what you have not yet shown as something your research will test.
Keep your design out of the problem. If the reader can guess your intervention from the statement alone, you have closed the problem too early.
Words like community, transition, justice and region carry the argument. Define them once and use them the same way through the report. Your conceptual framework is where they get their meaning.
Stress-test it
Weak problem statements fail in predictable ways. Here are seven. Read each sentence, name what is wrong, then open it to see the diagnosis and the repair. Then run your own draft through the checklist.
“This report is about the energy transition in Zeeland.”Diagnose it, then open +
A theme and a place, but nothing going wrong and nobody affected. Go back to your trunk sentence in step 1.
“The problem is that the village has no energy hub.”Diagnose it, then open +
The absence of your design is never the problem. Ask what the hub would answer: perhaps households pay high energy bills while the electricity produced next door leaves the area. State that, and the hub becomes one possible answer among several.
“The main problem is the lack of public support for wind turbines.”Diagnose it, then open +
The statement has adopted the acceptance framing (step 2) and turned residents into the problem. Repair: say what residents object to and why, and what the process gives them to work with. Then decide whose problem you are writing about.
“Climate change, the housing crisis, biodiversity loss and inequality all come together in the region.”Diagnose it, then open +
Four crises, no tension. Choose the place where two of them collide, for example new housing that cannot be connected because the grid is full, and write about that.
“6.1% of Dutch households lived in energy poverty in 2024 (CBS, 2025).”Diagnose it, then open +
A national average with no place and no mechanism. The same source shows strong concentrations: Heerlen 13.4%, Vaals 12.3%, Enschede 11.3%, and parts of North-East Groningen and South Limburg (CBS, 2025). Choose your place, then say what produces the figure there.
“The landscape is changing because of the energy transition.”Diagnose it, then open +
Passive voice hides the actors. Who is changing the landscape, through which decisions, and who loses what? Rewrite with a subject and an object.
“The Dutch electricity grid is congested.”Diagnose it, then open +
True, documented and widely known (Tweede Kamer, 2024). A problem statement needs a gap: what is not yet known or not yet addressed. For example: we do not know how congestion redistributes the benefits of the transition between [groups] in [region].
Print it, or copy it into your group document. Swap drafts with another group: each check you cannot tick is a sentence to rewrite.
Turn it into objectives
Your quarter guide asks for two kinds of objective right after the problem statement: research objectives (what you want to know) and design objectives (how you think you can respond to the issue). Your problem tree already contains both. Turn it into an objectives tree by rewriting each negative statement as the positive state you want to reach (Hovland, 2005). Knowledge gaps become research objectives; conditions become design objectives.
Problem treeHosting communities have little say over where infrastructure goes.Flip it +
Problem treeWe do not know how residents value the landscapes earmarked for infrastructure.Flip it +
Problem treeMost of the revenue leaves the area.Flip it +
Problem treeLocal initiatives wait while large projects go ahead.Flip it +
Invented example, continuing the one from step 1.
Your design objective is the objective the Pathways page starts from. Rewrite it in the form that page asks for: what should change, for whom, where, through which mechanism and by when. Then find the sentence below that comes closest. That is your primary pathway. The pathway in turn tells you which evidence you will need, and that sharpens your research objective.
Our first design objective read: “To propose an energy landscape and a decision process in which burdens, benefits and decisions are shared.” Which pathway is that?Think first, then open +
It points at D (decisions) and at C or B (benefits). The Pathways page warns against two primary pathways: one defines success, the other becomes a lens. Go back to the trunk of the tree. It says the hosting places have little say, so D leads. Sharing the benefits does not disappear: it stays in view through the spatial justice lens. The sharpened objective is in the chain below.
Invented example. The MRQ is a first draft: it still has to pass the tests on the research questions page.
In class · the 20-minute problem sprint
For Session 03, or any studio day when your problem has gone blurry. Work as a group, with a timer. You will not finish the statement in twenty minutes. You will find out which move is weakest.
Problem starters for the Q3 studio
Six tensions to get your group arguing. Each pairs a sourced fact with a tension that is ours and still has to be tested. None of them is a problem statement yet: take one to your region and run it through steps 1 to 5.
GovernanceDecisions move up a scaleOpen the starter +
What we know. National policy signals a partial recentralisation of decisions on energy infrastructure of strategic importance, while the regional energy strategies were built as regional arenas (Ministerie van EZK, 2024; Kempenaar et al., 2021).
A tension to test. Who loses a voice when a decision moves from the region to the state, and what could replace it?
Theory on this site: Regional planning and design →
Just transitionA region with a memoryOpen the starter +
What we know. The parliamentary inquiry concluded that the interests of the people of Groningen were structurally ignored during gas extraction (Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen, 2023).
A tension to test. As the north is reorganised around new energy projects, how could a region with this history become a partner in the transition rather than its host once again?
Theory on this site: Just transition →
Spatial justicePoverty where the energy wasOpen the starter +
What we know. Energy poverty is concentrated in a few large cities and in North-East Groningen and South Limburg; Heerlen has the highest share (CBS, 2025).
A tension to test. Do the places that powered the fossil economy now carry its costs twice: in their housing stock and in their exclusion from the new energy system? [H]
Theory on this site: Spatial justice →
Sustainability and landRoofs first, fields firstOpen the starter +
What we know. National policy asks for solar panels on roofs first and on farmland and nature only where necessary (Rijksoverheid, n.d.).
A tension to test. In [region], is the target being met with ground-mounted parks because roofs are harder to organise? Who decides, and who loses the land? [H]
Theory on this site: Doughnut economics →
CircularityThe second life of fossil sitesOpen the starter +
What we know. The studio brief lists the repurposing of refineries, pipelines, depots and port infrastructure as a theme of the transition away from fossil energy.
A tension to test. Who decides the second life of a fossil site, who inherits its contaminated soil, and who is in the room when it is decided? [H]
Theory on this site: Circular economy →
Energy democracyWho gets connected firstOpen the starter +
What we know. Grid congestion means new connections cannot always be made (Tweede Kamer, 2024).
A tension to test. Does congestion hit community energy initiatives harder than large developers, and what would a democratic order of connection look like? [H]
Theory on this site: Energy democracy →
Where next
References
Examples marked as invented were written for this page; the facts inside them are cited. Tensions marked H are hypotheses, not findings. Where the page gives our own reading or advice, it says so.
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson Education.
Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & FitzGerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.
Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek. (2025, July 25). Energiearmoede in 2024 gestegen naar 6,1 procent [News release]. https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/nieuws/2025/30/energiearmoede-in-2024-gestegen-naar-6-1-procent Accessed on: 31 October 2026.
Hovland, I. (2005). Successful communication: A toolkit for researchers and civil society organisations. Overseas Development Institute.
Informatiepunt Leefomgeving. (n.d.). Nationale afspraken en wetgeving klimaatmitigatie. https://iplo.nl/thema/klimaatverandering/klimaatwetgeving/nationale-afspraken-wetgeving-klimaatmitigatie/ Accessed on: 31 October 2026.
Jenkins, K., McCauley, D., Heffron, R., Stephan, H., & Rehner, R. (2016). Energy justice: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 11, 174–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.10.004
Kempenaar, A., Puerari, E., Pleijte, M., & van Buuren, M. (2021). Regional design ateliers on ‘energy and space’: Systemic transition arenas in energy transition processes. European Planning Studies, 29(4), 762–778. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2020.1781792
McCauley, D., & Heffron, R. (2018). Just transition: Integrating climate, energy and environmental justice. Energy Policy, 119, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2018.04.014
Ministerie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat. (2024). Programma Energiehoofdstructuur.
Parlementaire enquêtecommissie aardgaswinning Groningen. (2023). Groningers boven gas. Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal. https://www.tweedekamer.nl/groningen/rapport Accessed on: 31 October 2026.
Rijksoverheid. (2019). Klimaatakkoord.
Rijksoverheid. (n.d.). Zonne-energie. https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/duurzame-energie/zonne-energie Accessed on: 31 October 2026.
Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730
Rocco, R., & Gonçalves, J. (2025). Guide to effective report writing in urbanism. Chair of Spatial Planning & Strategy, Delft University of Technology. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15286400
Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge University Press.
Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal. (2024, January 24). Krapte op het elektriciteitsnet. https://www.tweedekamer.nl/debat_en_vergadering/uitgelicht/krapte-op-het-elektriciteitsnet Accessed on: 31 October 2026.
Vereniging van Nederlandse Gemeenten. (2025, September 15). Regionale energiestrategie (RES). https://vng.nl/artikelen/regionale-energiestrategie-res Accessed on: 31 October 2026.