Perspectives on Scale in Participatory Spatial Planning

Natarajan, Lucy

doi:10.2148/benv.45.2.230

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…There has been wide support in the literature over the last two decades for more communicative and collaborative approaches to planning through some form of more participatory democracy [2,15,[19][20][21][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. Almost two decades ago, Allmendinger [34] suggested that this move should be considered as more than just another planning theory-instead, it should be seen as a new and improved 'world view' that planners and other stakeholders need to adopt.…”

Section: Design-led Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing the Focus: Viewing Design-Led Events within Collaborative Planning

AlWaer

Cooper

2020

Sustainability

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Design-led planning events typically seek to involve stakeholders in collaborative decision-making about their built environment. In the literature, such events are often treated as one-off or standalone. In this paper, which draws on a survey of the experience of stakeholders involved in them, design-led events are seen in the context of, and in relation to, the collaborative planning process as a whole. Such events are portrayed as being critically affected by how they are instigated; how they are framed; how they are conducted; and, just as importantly, how they are implemented. Three separable strands of activity in collaborative planning processes are identified—design, stakeholder management, and event facilitation—along with the roles played in each of those by those responsible for initiating and then maintaining the engagement and enrolment of participating stakeholder groups in collaborative decision-making. Based on the captured experience of those who have participated in them, the value of design-led events is portrayed not as standing alone but as being crucially dependent on (a) prior decisions made long before any participants gather to engage in them and (b) subsequent decisions made long after the participants have departed. The originality of this paper lies in a desire to begin to construct an empirical base that can be employed for discussing and recommending improvements to collaborative planning processes. The three strands of activity identified by event participants—design, stakeholder management, and facilitation—may individually be relatively weak. But their contributions to collaborative planning can be strengthened by being bound tightly together into a more integrated and coherent whole.

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Section: Design-led Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing the Focus: Viewing Design-Led Events within Collaborative Planning

AlWaer

Cooper

2020

Sustainability

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“…Where public engagement is undertaken at the strategic level, for example during consultation about spatial planning documents, this engagement is undertaken at a scale dictated by administrative requirements, which are usually local or regional government boundaries (Natarajan 2019). Cartesian assumptions about locality (that assets in close proximity have the most impact on citizens' lives) underemphasise the connectivity between infrastructure across space and scales and overlooks the collective characteristic of infrastructure (Green Alliance 2015; Natarajan 2019).…”

Section: Public Perceptions Of Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Public perceptions of networked infrastructure

Roelich

Litman-Roventa

2020

Local Environment

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Infrastructure is crucial to the functioning of society and the economy. Yet, to avoid precipitating environmental breakdown, it must undergo transformation. We argue that citizens who rely on infrastructure's services should have a say in how transformation is managed. However, the complex nature of infrastructure means that public dialogue is difficult and rarely done well. Infrastructure has several characteristics, which make elicitation of perceptions challenging: it is connective, relational, obdurate, collective and subject to fragmented governance. We held a series of deliberative workshops in a city in the UK, to examine how public perceptions of infrastructure are shaped by these characteristics. We found that using infrastructure's characteristics as a framework for deliberation built participants' capabilities to articulate perceptions of infrastructure. We argue that using these characteristics also placed more emphasis on the socio-materiality of infrastructure and can address the disconnect between scales of participation and scales of decision making. This offers an alternative way to debate the desirable attributes of infrastructure, which we argue is more productive and inclusive.

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