Affected-party standing is the standing you acquire not by agreeing to a relationship but by being materially reached by one. A project can create relationships with people who never signed up for them — through pollution, noise, traffic, algorithmic consequences, displacement, or environmental risk — and the model’s rule is direct:
If a consequence reaches you substantially, a relationship has been created whether the powerful participant intended one or not — and that relationship carries legitimate standing.
This matters because conventional systems recognize contractual standing far more readily than involuntary standing, which is exactly how externalities escape accountability. Affected-party standing does not confer veto power; it confers a claim that cannot simply be ignored. It is the standing that ownership cannot erase and the reason signal and disclosure obligations follow consequence rather than title. See What Standing Governs.