Land-Use Planning and the Public: Is There an Optimal Degree of Civic Participation?

Miroslav Kopáček

doi:10.3390/land10010090

Abstract

Civic participation has an irreplaceable role in the land-use planning process because it contributes a practical perspective to expert knowledge. This article discusses whether there is actually a level of civic participation that can be considered optimal, which would allow experts to effectively obtain information from everyday users of the territory, who have the best practical knowledge of it; experts may also gain sufficient feedback on intended developments, based on knowledge about civic participation from representatives of individual municipalities. The article also proposes measures that can promote an optimal degree of participation in the land-use planning process. The fieldwork was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews with the mayors of municipalities with a population of up to 2000 inhabitants in selected districts of the Ústí Region (Czech Republic). The results suggest that the optimal degree of civic participation in land-use planning should have a representative extent, so it should not merely be a matter of individuals, but also one of groups of dozens of people, and such groups should encompass a balanced variety of characteristics; an optimal level of civic participation should also provide the maximum number of relevant impulses. Measures that may secure and foster an optimal degree of civic participation in land-use planning include (1) striving to avoid preferring purely voluntary participation; (2) simultaneously utilizing various tools to engage inhabitants; (3) educating inhabitants on a regular basis; and (4) consistently communicating and providing feedback, while also searching for informal means of communication and discussion.

Highlights

Participation is currently regarded as a major element of the planning process, as it seeks answers to questions of public interest—with the public’s assistance [1]—so its application helps strengthen and advance democracy [2,3], especially aggregative democracy [4].Participation leads to collaborative learning [3,4,5], which facilitates discussions between involved parties [6]
The mayors first assessed the degree of participation in the land-use planning process in their municipality, identifying three levels of participation with regard to quantity
In 14 municipalities, the mayors estimated public engagement as medium, that is, including the involvement of groups amounting to dozens of inhabitants: “Participation was in the dozens

Summary

Introduction

Participation is currently regarded as a major element of the planning process, as it seeks answers to questions of public interest—with the public’s assistance [1]—so its application helps strengthen and advance democracy [2,3], especially aggregative democracy [4].Participation leads to collaborative learning [3,4,5], which facilitates discussions between involved parties [6]. Participation is currently regarded as a major element of the planning process, as it seeks answers to questions of public interest—with the public’s assistance [1]—so its application helps strengthen and advance democracy [2,3], especially aggregative democracy [4]. Participation has a positive effect on planning overall, though individual particularities will always display certain negatives as well [11]. For this reason, this article seeks to present a comprehensive evaluation of participation with regard to both positive and negative aspects in the landuse planning process, and aims to answer the primary question, contained in the paper’s title, regarding whether an optimal degree of civic participation exists and can be defined

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Discussion

Conclusion