Participatory Transport Planning: The Experience of Eight European Metropolitan Regions

Abstract

and Barcelona. These metropolitan regions answered the questionnaire on strengths, weaknesses and needs and an in-depth questionnaire on participatory transport planning. The results were presented at a workshop, where representatives from these eight metropolitan regions shared their experience in two workshop sessions, one dealing with the key stakeholders in participatory transport planning and the other dealing with ways to get them involved. The findings show that stakeholder involvement differs between the local and regional levels. Participants' engagement is greater at the local level, where measures are more concrete and less abstract. The participatory planning process takes longer than the traditional planning processes, but it can ease the implementation of the project/measure to the extent that it justifies the additional resources and time. It is of crucial importance to include all the relevant stakeholders, to provide an experienced facilitator and, above all, to include the results in the final plans and policies. Although there are differences in the participatory planning culture between the countries and regions involved, the use of participatory methods in transport planning is becoming increasingly important.

Participative Planning in the Context of Metropolitan Governance. A Case of Cluj Metropolitan Area

“…Source: Nagy, 2019 Several interviewees felt important to point out that when it comes to the public, we must consider what group or segment of population we talk about as their attitude differ from each other depending on factors such as age, education, spatial affiliation, personal interest, availability etc. This remark is well argued also in the literature (OECD, 2004;Hassan et al, 2011;Nared, 2020;McKinley et al, 2021) that public participation is context specific and is highly dependent on the complexity of the setting such as geographical area, demographic variables but also the size and structure of the local administration, political majority. In relation to this, there was a common observation of the interviewees especially active in the urban core, on the fact that opened participative behaviour is more visible at urban than on rural level.…”

“…Participation and participatory planning are both concepts that refer to the direct involvement of community members where ideas, opinions and concerns of local citizens are collected (Roux and Cillliers, 2013;Baba et al 2009) to form joint decisions (Nared, 2020) and bring about better planning solutions for a sustainable society (Sulemana and Ngah 2012). According to Smith (1973) participation is a form of legitimacy in the decision-making process.…”

“…Participation is not a goal in itself but an instrument that leads to the achievement of an objective (OECD, 2004), it is context-specific and should have a clear purpose. As determined by Nared (2020), in the context of a metropolitan region participation should be addressed in the framework of its governance where planning is formulated as a process of a wide stakeholder involvement with a clear purpose. Just hearing out the voice of the public in the planning process is a scarce attempt to achieve a participative democracy based on the model of civic engagement (Davies, 2001).…”

Co-creating solutions to local mobility and transport challenges for the enhancement of health and wellbeing in an area of socioeconomic disadvantage

“…However, planning processes in transport and mobility have traditionally been based on a top-down expert led approach, and typically orientated towards technical and physical adjustments of traffic flow rather than towards social inclusion (Boisjoly and Yengoh, 2017;Booth and Richardson, 2001). More recently there has been a move towards adoption of co-creation planning approaches which engage the public by incorporating local participatory methods into the transport and mobility planning processes (Boisjoly and Yengoh, 2017;Nared, 2020).…”

“…In a broader sense, while community localism has long been recognised as an integral part of democratic political systems (Evans et al, 2013), its influence on factors that affect the lives of local people are often limited within the overall local and national governance framework (Nared, 2020). This is particularly significant in communities where vulnerable social groups/individuals experiencing higher levels of socioeconomic deprivation have a sense of powerlessness over the broad social, economic and environmental conditions in which they live (Batty et al, 2011).…”