Is there a crisis of participatory planning?

Abstract

The critical literature on participation warns that a focus on ‘consensus’ evades the political in planning, preventing citizens from confronting and challenging discourse and prevailing orthodoxy about the way the urban ought to be constituted. These critiques raise important questions about the efficacy of participatory planning and its political formation. Moreover, the extent to which citizen’s participation can ever challenge dominant trajectories has reached a point of conceptual ‘crisis’. In this article, I explore the different ways in which participation manifests from the politicising participatory moments in planning. Examining a single case study in Melbourne, Australia, I draw upon 15 key informant interviews with community campaigners who mounted a successful campaign to defeat the controversial East West Link road project. By examining the formal and informal political manifestations of participation over a period of 2 years, this article challenges the sentiment that there is a crisis of participatory planning. It shows how decisions to engage the citizenry in prescribed ways induce other manifestations and formations of citizen’s participation through politics and how these manifestations garner a pervasive and influential trajectory to reshape participatory planning.

Post‐political planning and community opposition: asserting and challenging consensus in planning urban regeneration in Newcastle, New South Wales

“…Thus, the planning for inner Newcastle differs from what might be expected at sites of conflict, where the post-political tendency is typically to restrict and curtail opportunities for participation in an attempt to limit conflict and challenge (Legacy, 2016b). Thus, the planning for inner Newcastle differs from what might be expected at sites of conflict, where the post-political tendency is typically to restrict and curtail opportunities for participation in an attempt to limit conflict and challenge (Legacy, 2016b).…”

“…Under such a governance regime, the common good is defined and delivered by powerful elites (Ranciere, 1998). Thus, efforts at consensus work to obscure power differentials and inequality (Legacy, 2016b). Consensus-based decision making seeks to secure particular configurations, to close off contest and define the future city that aligns with politically powerful actors, such as the state and owners of capital (MacDonald, 2015).…”

The post‐politics of transport: establishing a new meeting ground for transport politics

“…Based on interview data with community campaigners and media commentary (Legacy, 2016a;2016b), the opposition against the East West Link proposal included concerns that the project lacked public legitimation, since the Liberals campaigned on an agenda to invest in public transport, which helped them win government in 2010. Citizens were also concerned that the business case supporting the project was not made publicly available and that the project had a low cost-benefit ratio.…”

Plowshares or Swords? Fostering Common Ground Across Difference

“…In divided cities, for example, planning scholars look to agonism in tandem with other strategies as a way forward for transitioning city actors to living with difference (Bollens, 2012, p. 239;Gaffikin & Morrisey, 2011). Other scholars argue that agonism and communicative practices can co-exist as planning processes evolve (Fougère & Bond, 2016;Inch, 2015;Legacy, 2016).…”

“…During my research on contested sustainability planning and infrastructure processes, unexpected areas of convergence emerged in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Atlanta, Georgia region, and the City of Gainesville, Florida (Trapenberg Frick, 2013, 2016Trapenberg Frick, Weinzimmer, & Waddell, 2015) 1 . These convergences arose despite staunch disagreement over which planning strategies would support prosperity in these areas.…”