Deliberative Walks: citizen participation in local-level planning processes

Abstract

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Social Sustainability and Transformation in Higher Educational Settings: A Utopia or Possibility?

“…Before the full-day seminar on urban transformation, each participating student was tasked to prepare a short presentation about a district and a specific contested place in it, and to discuss the characteristics and specific place-based challenges for local-level social sustainability. Theoretically, the emphasis was on place-based learning through a (structured) development walk [56,57], during which the group visited seven inner-city districts and places with various characteristics (1. St Georg, 2.…”

Doing critical and creative research in adult education Doing critical and creative research in adult education , edited by Bernie Grummell and Fergal Finnegan, Leiden, Brill Sense, 2020, 228 pp., €40.00, ISBN 978-90-04-42073-1

“…Goodin and Niemeyer (2003) argue that reflection and focusing attention on an issue will generate "internal-reflective deliberation" and state that this is likely to happen in earlier stages of deliberation and will have a large impact on participants. Lindell and Ehrström (2018) in turn note that the development walk sequence (in Studentlab Deliberative Walks) had a more profound impact on participants, which was sequenced in the opposite order, with theoretical content first, followed by in situ-observations.…”

“…Respect, tolerance, patience, empathy, and being open-minded are some of the values that we learned during the group discussions", noted one international student of the Studentlab, while another emphasized: "The deliberative walks and democracy part grew my political efficacy, and the interaction with the city officials diminished my political efficacy. (Lindell & Ehrström, 2018) It is important to reflect upon the impact of sequencing in Deliberative Walks. Would the outcome change if the elements were realized in a different order?…”

Planning with People

“…Goodin and Niemeyer (2003) argue that reflection and focusing attention on an issue will generate "internal-reflective deliberation" and state that this is likely to happen in earlier stages of deliberation and will have a large impact on participants. Lindell and Ehrström (2018) in turn note that the development walk sequence (in Studentlab Deliberative Walks) had a more profound impact on participants, which was sequenced in the opposite order, with theoretical content first, followed by in situ-observations. The Deliberative Walk method takes sequencing into account as it may indeed influence the learning process.…”