In this article the arrangements for the participatory planning of the five largest Finnish cities are examined from the perspectives of both democracy and planning theories. Four paradigms that form the continuum of general planning theoretical debate are identified as being relevant in the Finnish context: comprehensive-rationalistic, incrementalist, consensus-oriented communicative and conflict-oriented agonistic planning theory. These are discussed in relation to the parallel development of democracy theory: from the aggregative to the deliberative and further to the agonistic model of democracy. The empirical study reveals that while each paradigm shift in theory purports to replace the former theory with a new one, in practice the new theory emerges as a new addition to the palette of coexisting theoretical sources, to be drawn upon as a source of guidance and inspiration in organizing participatory planning. The five Finnish cities combine traits of different theories in their arrangements of planning participation, often in a fashion that generates institutional ambiguity. The argument concludes with discussing the necessity of further empirical and developmental research, where the contexts of both planning theory and democracy theory are related to the institutional challenges of planning conduct. If this does not happen the emerging agonistic planning theory, too, may become a paradigm shift at the level of theory only, thereby contributing to the widening gap between theory and practice.

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Participatory policies seeking to foster active citizenship continue to be dominated by a territorial imagination. Yet the world where people identify and perform as citizens is spatially multifarious. This article engages with the tension between territorially grounded perceptions and relational modes of practicing political agency. Studying empirically the Finnish child and youth policies we address jointly the participatory obligations that municipalities strive to fulfill, and the spatial attachments that children and young people establish in their lived worlds. To this end we introduce the concept of lived citizenship as an interface where the territorially-bound public administration and the plurality of spatial attachments characteristic to transnational living may meet. We conclude by proposing a regrounding of lived citizenship in both topological and topographical terms as an improvement in theoretical understanding of mundane political agency and as a step towards more proficient participatory policies.

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