Planners’ role in accommodating citizen disagreement: The case of Dutch urban planning

Abstract

Citizen disagreement on urban policies and planning decisions is both ubiquitous and fundamental to democracy. Post-political debates debunk the 'consensus approach', which is grounded in Habermasian communication theory, for circumventing disagreement. This article presents a counter argument. Our analysis of the highly institutionalised and consensus-oriented Dutch planning framework shows that this system does not necessarily prevent effective voicing of disagreement. The empirical material demonstrates that consensus is not a pre-defined and static outcome but a dynamic and sensitive process in which urban planning is an instrument. We conclude that planners could facilitate consensus through accommodative roles that address disagreement by taking an adaptive, proactive and more human stance.

Untitled

“…Another example is the post-political debates which debunk the 'consensus approach', which is grounded in Habermasian communication theory for circumventing disagreement and for excluding and marginalizing contestation and conflict, which leads to exclusionary practices (Bengs, 2005;Fainstein, 2000;Flyvbjerg & Richardson, 2002;Harris, 2002;Purcell, 2009;Swyngedouw, 2005). However, consensus is not a pre-defined and static outcome but a dynamic and sensitive process that planners could facilitate through accommodative roles that address disagreement by taking an adaptive, proactive and more human stance (Ozdemir & Tasan-Kok, 2019). These kinds of examples are on the rise in planning studies, which are dissatisfied with sole criticism and seek ways to step aside from 'standard (critical) analysis' in order to see the overlooked choices and missed questions, and misperceptions (Campbell et al, 2014).…”

The role of the expert knowledge in politicizing urban planning processes: A case from Istanbul

“…In this dialogue, conflicts are not understood as disagreements between ‘enemies’, but between ‘adversaries’, in a relationship where differences are accepted as legitimate. In relation to this, Mouffe draws attention to a conflictual type of consensus on the ethico-political values of liberty and equality for all (Mouffe, 2005: 31, 212), yet she does not hold up to scrutiny on how to achieve it, as emphasized elsewhere (Khan, 2013; Özdemir and Taşan-Kok, 2017).…”

“…Amidst these discussions on politicization or the political dimension of planning, the politics of planning continued to be a crucial issue. As argued by Özdemir and Taşan-Kok (2017), planning is a consensus mechanism, which has to deal with continuously changing cities, in which people with different demands and desires want to live, and where we cannot continue forever with contestation. For Bond (2011), some degree of a democratic agreement is necessary in planning practice to enable democratic decision-making to proceed beyond deliberation or conflict.…”

“…The combination of these two roles constitutes the politicizing role of the expert knowledge in the planning process. The first role is emphasized elsewhere (Özdemir and Eraydin, 2017; Özdemir and Taşan-Kok, 2017; Uitermark and Nicholls, 2017), yet I aim to have a more in-depth look into it. First of all, the discussion here is not on the expert knowledge of municipal professionals, but of voluntary planners, as well as architects and lawyers specialized in urban planning, who ‘want to use their technical knowledge and capacity for the deprived groups in the society’, as expressed by one of the experts I interviewed (E1).…”

Participatory Modeling With QUICKScan to Shape Sustainable Urban Development

“…There are various governance modes to conduct the planning process. Schatz and Rogers (2016) and Özdemir and Tasan-Kok (2017) distinguish between technocratic and participatory approaches in urban spatial planning. In technocratic planning the system operates with elected representatives in the government which heavily depends on technocratic expertise of professional planners.…”