Evaluation of Public Participation

Abstract

Public participation has become a central element of planning activity over the last decades. The planning literature has given considerable attention to participation in theory and practice, discussing its benefits for democratic governance, its multiple goals and criteria for assessing success. Although planning academics and practitioners understand the importance of participation and know that participatory processes often fail, the field of participation evaluation lags behind. This paper explores how often, why and how planners evaluate participation in practice. It builds on data collected through a nationally representative survey of 761 AICP-certified planners. We find that they rarely evaluate participation formally. Informal evaluations rely on a wide range of criteria about participation processes and outcomes consistent with the criteria identified by planning theory. The paper presents these evaluation criteria and the practices and recommendation of the planners with most experience in participation evaluation.

Legitimate planning processes or informed decisions? Exploring public officials' rationales for participation in regional green infrastructure planning in Estonia

“…The spatial planning sector probably has longer traditions of communicative planning (Laurian & Shaw, 2009) whereas the need to promote active involvement of stakeholders has entered into the conservation discourse more recently (Rauschmayer, Berghöfer, Omann, & Zikos, 2009 (Caddell, 2009). Notably, the European spatial planning policies refer more to instrumental justifications for participation, whereas the biodiversity policies mostly rely on an awareness-raising discourse.…”

“…The different contexts and origins of these two policy domains provide a possible explanation for this. The spatial planning sector probably has longer traditions of communicative planning (Laurian & Shaw, 2009) whereas the need to promote active involvement of stakeholders has entered into the conservation discourse more recently (Rauschmayer, Berghöfer, Omann, & Zikos, 2009 (Caddell, 2009). This meant a centralised planning model of key societal and policy fields, with extensive control exerted by the Soviet Union.…”

The Quagmire of Stakeholder Engagement in Tourism Planning: A Case Example from Australia

“…Thus, governance discourse in relation to democracy, collaboration, coordination, stakeholder management, decentralization, community planning, power politics, institutional arrangements, and community participation appears to be a key principle for tourism policy and planning (Wesley & Pforr, 2010). As argued by Laurian and Shaw (2009), "since the communicative turn of the 1980s and 1990s, planning theorists support more deliberative, or discursive, models that emphasize inclusive dialogue, mutual learning, and collective problem-solving" (p. 293). strategy under Labor rule, the Northern Territory Tourism Strategic Plan-2003-2007, which was released in December 2002(NTTC 2002a.…”

Reviewing the Ambiguous: Examining the Typologies of Public Participation Towards Its Evaluation

“…Several authors have noted this fact including the context-specific nature of the concept (Hillier 2000;Healey, 2003;Laurian & Shaw, 2008). The evaluation of deliberate participatory processes, in order to improve subsequent programmes and projects, is therefore not a new thing (see Rowe & Frewer 2000, 2004Laurian & Shaw, 2008;Brown, 2012).…”

“…To sum up, Laurian and Shaw (2008) b. Motivation: This reflects the source of the initial urge to evaluate, either as a result of it being a requirement by the government or the donor agency, reactions from residents or a failure of previous projects.…”