Participatory planning

Rational planning tradition Prior to the 1970s, community planning was generally led in a top-down way by professionals. In this era, the rational planning model was the dominant way of approaching urban planning. While discussing the common threads in the vision and work of early urban planners, urbanist Peter Hall writes that "Their vision seems to have been that of the planner as the omniscient ruler, who should create new settlement forms ... without interference or question. The complexities of planning in a participatory democracy where individuals and groups have their own, often contradictory, notions of what should happen—all of these are absent from the work of these pioneers." Under these programs, large areas in major cities, often where poorer people and people of color lived, were demolished, and a new plan for the area was designed and carried out. These urban renewal programs have been criticized for destroying viable communities with long histories, and displacing disproportionately black and poor people to other underserved parts of the city. Emergence of participatory planning In the 1960s and 70s, there was a growing wave of critical responses to these traditional rationalist approaches. In 1969, Sherry Arnstein wrote a landmark essay, A Ladder of Citizen Participation, describing different types of citizen involvement in municipal programs, and criticizing less participatory approaches to urban planning. In the 1970s a series of planning theorists suggested alternative models of urban planning which were more participatory in nature. Prominent among them were John Friedmann's model of transactive planning, Paul Davidoff and Linda Davidoff's model of advocacy planning, and Stephen Grabow and Allen Heskin's theory of radical planning. These models constituted a shift towards a more participatory planning paradigm which has influenced modern urban planning. At around the same time, participation became increasingly central to planning policy and practice. In 1961, landscape architect Karl Linn started the first community design center in Philadelphia. Community design centers are organizations which provide planning expertise to marginalized communities. These grassroots participatory planning models became widespread, often organizing to fight major urban renewal projects. and New York, where technology facilitates broader and more inclusive participation. ==Methods==

Participatory planning programs use a range of methods and tools to facilitate public participation in the urban planning process. Since the 1960s, planning programs have used tools such as referendums, focus groups, consensus conferences, citizen advisory committees, public hearings, and public opinion surveys to encourage public participation. Some planning practitioners employ more comprehensive approaches to participatory planning, such as Participatory rural appraisal. Social media and other digital tools have transformed participatory urban planning. Many organizations have integrated these participatory planning methods into their work, either conducting broad community planning projects or conducting planning initiatives for specific purposes such as forest management, natural disaster risk reduction, and ancient rock art management. Participatory rural appraisal Participatory Rural Appraisal is a method of participatory planning, used most often in the context of international community development. Participatory Rural Appraisal draws heavily on the work of Paulo Freire and his idea of critical consciousness, as well as Kurt Lewin's integration of democratic leadership, group dynamics, experiential learning, action research, and open systems theory. PRA has been modified and reframed in the related models of Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), and Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). Robert Chambers, an important early practitioner of Participatory Rural Appraisal outlines a "menu" of specific methods and techniques that are central to the broad technique of Participatory Rural Appraisal, including: • Semi-structured interviews • Participatory mapping and modelling • Time lines and trend and change analysis • Transect walks • Daily time-use analysis • Institutional diagramming • Matrix scoring and ranking • Shared presentations and analysis • Oral histories and ethno-biographies Participatory e-planning Participatory Planning organizations can use digital tools to enhance and organize public participation in the planning process. E-participation has come into use in public service programs as information and communications technologies have become more available. E-planning draws on the tools and techniques of e-participation in the context of urban planning. It has been described as "a socio-cultural, ethical and political practice which takes place offline and online in the overlapping phases of the planning and decision-making cycle, by using digital and non-digital tools". Participatory e-planning research has generally focused on incorporating forms of participation with existing governance and urban planning processes. Some participatory e-planning programs involve the use of relatively simple digital tools like online questionnaires, surveys, and polls to consultant citizens. Other participatory planning processes have used existing digital technologies like virtual reality, and interactive games to increase participation. Some digital tools have been designed specifically to encourage public participation in urban planning. Participatory geographic information systems Participatory Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are an increasingly widespread tool for participatory e-planning. Traditional GIS are computerized tools that organize a wide variety of geographically referenced information. This information is generally displayed on a computerized map. Since the 1990s there have been attempts to develop Participatory GIS systems. These systems are diverse, applied in a wide range of contexts, and have incorporated different ways of asking for public participation, such as Participatory 3D Modelling. Often, participatory planning practitioners will create a detailed interactive map of a community using a GIS program, and then ask for public input using the interactive map as a tool. Several planning programs have combined Participatory GIS Software with large interactive touchscreens, so a large group of stakeholders can stand around an interactive map and manipulate it to give their input. GIS technology has also been integrated with other kinds of Information and Communications Technology such as Decision Support Systems, to create interfaces to bring about public participation. ==Theory==

A range of scholars, theorists, and urban planners have suggested different theoretical models to emphasize citizen participation in the planning process. Non-hierarchical planning In 1965, Christopher Alexander published an influential essay, A City is Not a Tree, later expanded upon in a book of the same name. In the essay he argued against mainstream planning practices which represented cities with overly simplified hierarchical models. Other scholars drew on this to argue for more participatory, non-hierarchical approaches to planning. Scholars argued that non-hierarchical models of the city were too complex to be understood or designed through a centralized process, and so must rely on the input and perspectives of a wide range of people. This non-hierarchical understanding of how cities function laid the groundwork for the participatory planning paradigm. Arnstein's ladder of citizen participation Responding to the persistent gap between the desires of local communities, and traditional rationalistic approaches to planning, Sherry Arnstein wrote her essay A Ladder of Citizen Participation in 1969 to "encourage a more enlightened dialogue". The ladder identifies different levels of citizen participation in government programs. Arnstein describes eight different forms of participation, arranged in three categories: non-participation, degrees of tokenism, and degrees of citizen power. She advocates that government projects and planning processes should involve the forms of citizen participation that she places higher on the ladder. Participatory planning programs incorporate many different levels and forms of participation, but they generally draw on Arnstein's critique of programs that have no role for citizen input, or only incorporate tokenistic participation. Participatory planning models Within the participatory planning paradigm, there are several theoretical models of what participatory planning should look like. The kind of participation that these models call for varies, but they all emphasize participation as a central piece of a well-designed approach to planning. The following are several of the most influential participatory planning models. Advocacy planning Paul Davidoff and Linda Davidoff, in their essay Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning, proposed a participatory approach to planning called Advocacy Planning, in which planners would work directly with different groups of people in the city, including underrepresented communities and interest groups, to design plans which corresponded to those groups' specific needs. Planners would then argue on behalf of these plans in front of a central planning commission. This model emphasizes learning and development of the people and institutions involved, rather than more specific programmatic goals. Communicative planning A group of planning theorists in the 1980s and 1990s, including Patsy Healey and Judith Innes, developed a participatory model of planning which they refer to as communicative planning. In this process, planners work to support this deliberation and offer technical expertise when called for. ==Examples==

World Bank The community-driven development approach advocated by the World Bank is an example of participatory planning. A number of examples link participatory community plans with local government planning. One widely applied example is South Africa's national policy of community-based planning methodology, and an adapted version, the Harmonised Participatory Planning Guide for Lower Level Local Governments, which is national policy in Uganda. Community-Based Planning has been applied across the whole of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa, including the City of Durban, and is being rolled out in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. Britain in the 1940s After the bombing of British cities during World War II, planning advocates wanted to use the reconstruction planning as a way to engage the public. The planners wanted more authority in the political system to play a more substantive role within their democracy. The planners created new techniques to, "communicate with laypeople, including mobilizing publicity, measuring public opinion, organizing exhibitions, and experimenting with new visual strategies." Participatory approaches and computerized tools like decision support systems (DSS) have been used to help balance these diverse priorities. ==Criticism==

Participatory planning has been discussed as contributing to the housing crisis by slowing the speed of new development projects. == See also ==