Participation in Urban Planning and the Post-Socialist Legacy. Revisiting Maier's Hypothesis Through the Case of Hungary

Abstract

According to Maier's (2001) hypothesis, the democratization process in post-socialist countries would lead to the increased importance of stakeholder and citizen participation in urban planning. Increasing circles of stakeholders would be able to join and become empowered. The objective of the present paper is to revisit Maier's hypothesis in the Hungarian context. We attempt to shed light on the main factors that shape the framework conditions of participation in urban planning; we ask if the three decades of transition can be described as an approximation to the Western standards in urban planning, as Maier suggested. We conducted 49 semi-structured interviews in three Hungarian middle-sized cities with various stakeholders of urban planning. We carried out qualitative content analysis based on inductive coding in order to identify the underlying factors, which shape the framework conditions of participation. We managed to identify six factors. They have mostly accumulated since the fall of the socialist era, the postsocialist legacy may only have indirect effects on them. These six factors add up to a halt in the democratization of planning and the serious limits to consensus building. We argue that these two processes diverted Hungary from the path Maier envisioned, and make the Hungarian context for participation and participatory techniques fundamentally different from the Western-European contexts.

A klímavédelem realitásai a hazai városokban

“…A kompetenciahiány problémáját erősíti, hogy hazánkban nem tudott kialakulni a közösségi részvételen alapuló tervezés intézménye. Ennek okai részben a pártállami múltban keresendők (Pálné Kovács 2016), de más tényezők is hatással vannak arra (Bajmócy 2021), hogy az önkormányzatok egyáltalán nem vagy nem a megfelelő szakaszban és nem a megfelelő feladatok elvégzésére vonták be a helyi szereplőket. Tehát még a helyben meglévő tudást sem tudták megfelelően alkalmazni, amely enyhíthetné az önkormányzatoknál meglévő kompetenciahiányt.…”

Tensions of Urban Development in Post-Socialist Cities: The Case Study of Community-Based Initiative for Preservation and Transformation of Open Public Space in Banja Luka

“…The public participation in urban planning is mainly rooted in the concept of consensus seeking (Bajmócy, 2021), and the main pre-requisite for consensus reaching is constructive dialogue. Due to the many actors, with diverse interests, involved in urban planning (citizens, profi t and non-profi t organizations, planners, public administrators and private entities), the confl ict is inevitable part of the process (Healey, 1997;Forester, 1987in Maricic et al, 2018.…”

The potential role of university community engagement (UCE) in social justice and sustainability transformation - the case of the University of Szeged (Hungary)

“…Szeged is a controversial modern urban space (Szirmai, 2014) characterized by the concentration of an educated and qualified middle-class and members of the economic, political, and cultural elite on one hand, and a variety of social problems, social inequalities, poverty, and marginalization on the other. Similarly to the Hungarian context in general, urban policymaking in Szeged has been characterized by a halt in the democratization of planning and serious limits to consensus building (Bajmócy, 2021), so the inclusion of social groups in urban policymaking is not automatic, especially in the case of marginalized groups.…”