TEMSİLİ SİSTEMDE KATILIMCI PLANLAMA NASIL ALGILANMAKTADIR?: İSVEÇ'İN ULLERÅKER BÖLGESİ ÖRNEĞİ

Pınar AKARÇAY

doi:10.30798/makuiibf.910042

Abstract

The participatory planning approach that emerged in urban planning in recent years is based on collaborative, communicative, and deliberative planning processes that cover the differences. The main purpose of participatory planning is to include the perspective of actors (political representatives, planners, citizens) in planning processes by developing horizontal planning tools and processes among actors. However, the decision-making system in Sweden is built on representative democracy based on top-down policy-making processes and vertical relations. Therefore, the simultaneous coexistence of representative top-down policy-making processes and multi-faceted participatory arrangements make Sweden an interesting example and suggests that some dilemmas and tensions may arise in practice. At this point, in a political system with strong representative democracy like Sweden, it provides important data on how actors perceive participatory planning and how participatory planning is implemented. In this context, this research discussed how participatory planning is perceived in urban planning in the logic of representative democracy in Sweden. Ulleråker region of Uppsala, in particular, was chosen to carry out the field research, and thus, interviews on the subject were conducted in this region with the main actors of decision-making processes in urban planning such as political representatives, public officials/planners, and citizens.

Highlights

Participatory planning approach, which is an important city planning theory among policy makers, has gained importance in recent years
Representative decision-making processes founded on the logic of representative democracy are surely based on the fact that the political representatives come to power through the elections, and have the power to make decisions on behalf of the citizens and the bureaucrats, who stick to the democratic principles of the representative system; in this line, the political representatives are the key authority in the decision-making and steering processes
The representative democracy set on the roles of the vertical, top-down hierarchical relations among the actors in the decision-making processes, have a different understanding that cannot be matched with participatory logic

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Participatory planning approach, which is an important city planning theory among policy makers, has gained importance in recent years. As a matter of fact, participatory logic and representative logic involve incomparably logical differences among actors (local politicians, local bureaucrats/planners, and citizens) in their roles and participation in decision-making processes. How participatory planning in Sweden is perceived by the actors of decision-making process was analyzed. In this context, interviews with local representatives (politicians), planners (bureaucrats) of the Uppsala Municipality, and local citizens living in the Ulleråker region were evaluated and analyzed. The interviews focused on how local representatives, planners/bureaucrats, and citizens; in other words, actors of the main decision-making process perceive participatory planning. In this context, a total of 40 people were interviewed. Each interview took an average of 40 minutes and was recorded with an audio recorder

REPRESENTATIVE LOGIC AND REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

REPRESENTATIVE LOGIC IN SWEDEN

Swedish Context of Participatory Logic

Ulleråker City Development Plan

Analysis of the Ulleråker Case

CONCLUSION