Citizen Participation In Planning Research Articles

How do boundary objects influence people-centered smart cities? A systematic literature review

Abstract This study explores the critical role of boundary objects in the context of people-centred smart cities, a new paradigm in urban development that emphasises citizen participation in planning and decision-making. Boundary objects—artefacts, documents, or concepts that facilitate communication and collaboration across different knowledge domains—are increasingly recognized as essential tools in the complex, multi-stakeholder environment of urban governance. Despite extensive research on boundary objects in organizational contexts, their specific application in smart cities remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by investigating how BOs, particularly collaborative tools and spaces, contribute to innovation, engagement, and knowledge-sharing in people-centred smart cities. Employing a Systematic Literature Review following the PRISMA protocol, this research synthesizes key insights from scholarly articles to comprehensively understand boundary objects' role in urban governance. This study offers a theoretical framework for leveraging boundary objects to enhance the inclusivity and sustainability of smart cities. It suggests avenues for future research, including empirical validation and exploration of boundary objects in diverse geographic and cultural contexts.

Excluded communities and participatory land-use planning: experience from informal Roma settlements in Serbia

Citizen participation in the planning and decision-making process in the European post-socialist context is much debated. Still, the involvement of excluded communities in the urban planning process remains understudied. This paper presents and discusses the application of an innovative participatory approach designed to ensure active involvement of an excluded ethnic minority, the Roma community, in the process of formulating and adopting land-use plans for informal settlements in Serbia. By analysing the development of land-use plans in 11 municipalities, we observe that the applied participatory approach enhanced the inhabitants’ active participation and helped build consensus on the planned solution between the key actors. Findings also suggested that further work with citizens, capacity building of planners and administration, and secured financial mechanisms are needed to move citizen participation in urban planning beyond the limited statutory requirements.

Планування реновації міст у Німеччині - аналіз управління

The European Union and Germany strive for a “green and just Europe” with a climate-neutral building stock, net zero land consumption and cities of social cohesion and cultural identity. Thus, urban renewal as the protection and cautious re-modelling of socio-material urban fabrics re-gains topicality. Urban renewal is neither a new nor an easy mode of urban development: West Germany experienced the first heydays of urban renewal planning in 1960s and 70s; big constructions works triggered civil protests and spurred institutional changes, namely the introduction of citizen participation in planning. Since then, the planning and local political institutions have continued to change oscillating between neoliberal and ‘citizen democratic reforms’. So far, however, the German planning research has ignored these changes and the evolving experiences of urban renewal. This paper steps in here: It aims at a critical review of the local practices of renewal planning in German cities today. Starting from the governance concept, the paper reveals key characteristics of and interdependencies among the local stakeholder groups in urban renewal – i.e. planners, politicians, citizens and activists, private entrepreneurs. It shows (1) how the formal political and planning institutions pre-frame the actors’ opportunities and interdependencies, and how they use leeway differently due to specific informal institutions. The paper (2) points at the tight and critical interdependency between the local political bodies and the planning departments, which differs importantly from some Eastern European contexts. Finally, the paper reveal (3) some new challenges that are the un-explored local effects of citizen participation and ppp-cooperation in German renewal planning today: It becomes evident that participatory and cooperative renewal planning is still a demanding learning process in Germany without easy nor final receipts.

Participatory Democracy as a Constitutional Requirement: Experiences with Citizen Participation in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia

The Tunisian Constitution of 2014 requires local authorities to adopt mechanisms of participatory democracy. This paper presents how citizen participation in development planning has been implemented by the Tunisian administration in the frame of two Tunisian-German cooperation projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The first project example consists of a multi-stakeholder dialogue for integrated water resource management in Kairouan, central Tunisia, whereas the second example is about citizen participation in planning small-scale investments in local infrastructure in different parts of the country. External facilitation, inclusiveness, transparency, expectation management and commitment from all levels of the administration are described as success factors for implementing participatory processes. Similar cooperation projects supporting citizen participation should be aware of on-going power struggles at different levels, as well as the challenges of local legal implementation. Both examples illustrate areas of tension between the remnants of the authoritarian past in Tunisia, and innovative democratic approaches. Furthermore, the examples allow to observe how ambiguities regarding the distribution of decision-making power between national, regional and local level become manifest in the on-going process of decentralisation in Tunisia.

Monitory Democracy as Citizen-driven Participatory Planning: The Urban Politics of Redwatch in Sydney

This article analyses a case of citizen-driven participation in urban planning in Sydney, Australia. Drawing on a case study of the local resident action group REDWatch the analysis is undertaken within the context of the hybrid forms of technocratic, participatory and neoliberal planning that are operating in the New South Wales planning system. Framed by the concept of monitory democracy, the analysis explores the four key features of monitory forms of civic action: (1) monitoring powerful social actors; (2) encouraging difference, disagreement, debate and change; (3) making formal power structures more transparent and accountable; and (4) fostering new forms of informal political power. The findings demonstrate that analyses of formal community consultation events and participatory planning policies are far too narrow to determine the civic utility of citizen participation in planning. Expanding the analytical borderland beyond the formal structures of the planning system exposes important informal citizen participation practices that are operating from outside of planning systems. Unlike formal state-driven participatory planning events and policies, these informal citizen-driven participatory planning practices can deal with planning hybridity and conflict, which are increasingly central to many contemporary planning systems.

The interplay of governance, power and citizen participation in community tourism planning

This research examines a unique case of tourism planning and explores the relationships between governance, power, and citizen participation in community decision-making. In less than two years, the community of Sitka, Alaska, undertook two separate tourism-planning processes in response to proposed tourism development. The first plan followed a participant-led governance structure; the second plan a council-led governance structure. The participant-led governance structure produced a plan through a collaborative process that empowered citizen participants and sought to limit growth, while the council-led structure utilized an external consultant and produced a more pro-growth plan that downplayed citizen concern for maintaining quality of life. The council-led plan was adopted as the guiding document for the community. Ultimately, the power over plan adoption and implementation lay in the hands of the local government, creating a stressful community environment for many involved in both planning processes. Evidence of the advantages and disadvantages of citizen participation in each planning process is presented.

Citizens as Knowledge Producers in Urban Change: Can Participation Change Procedures and Systems

The aim of the article is to understand more about the potentials of citizen participation in planning. The research project in focus was conducted in a stigmatised Swedish context and was participatory in approach, including local interaction activities, case-based participant observation and key informant interviews. The project aim was to develop knowledge about the interplay between top-down invitations for dialogue and bottom-up citizen initiatives. Two cases are discussed in relation to previous research on participation. The participatory process was shown to influence how ‘socially responsible public procurement’ of a construction project was carried out, and hence the article concludes that citizen participation in design can influence systems and procedures. The question of how such knowledge and awareness can develop the planning profession ends the article.

Citizens as Knowledge Producers in Urban Change: Can Participation Change Procedures and Systems

The aim of the article is to understand more about the potentials of citizen participation in planning. The research project in focus was conducted in a stigmatised Swedish context and was participatory in approach, including local interaction activities, case-based participant observation and key informant interviews. The project aim was to develop knowledge about the interplay between top-down invitations for dialogue and bottom-up citizen initiatives.Two cases are discussed in relation to previous research on participation. The participatory process was shown to influence how ‘socially responsible public procurement’ of a construction project was carried out, and hence the article concludes that citizen participation in design can influence systems and procedures. The question of how such knowledge and awareness can develop the planning profession ends the article.

Role of Local Contextual Factors in Building Public Participation GIS: The Milwaukee Experience

By virtue of its cost and technological complexity, GIS has been critiqued as an elitist anti-democratic technology. In response there has been an ongoing proliferation of public participation GIS (PPGIS) initiatives in order to facilitate citizen participation in planning. It is critical to conduct case study research ofthese initiatives, in order to identify factors and conditions fostering sustainable PPGIS initiatives at the local level. Through the case of Milwaukee, this paper explores the local contextual factors and the network of actors and institutions that foster the PPGIS process in that city. Particular attention is paid to the role of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and its efforts to provide equitable public access to GIS through university/community partnerships. The paper critically explores the PPGIS initiatives undertaken in Milwaukee and concludes that the initiatives contain contradictory impulses of creating simultaneous empowerment of community organizations and their dependence on the network of stakeholder institutions.

Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response in Disasters: The Need for Interorganizational Coordination

12. Ronald Perry, Comprehensive Emergency Management (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1984). 13. James Glass, Citizen Participation in Planning, Journal of the American Planning Association 45 (April 1979), pp. 180-189. 14. Perry, 1981, p. 79. 15. This concept has been further developed in Thomas Drabek, Problems in Disaster: Family Evacuation, Social Problems 16 (1969), pp. 336-349; Charles Fritz, Disaster, in Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet, eds., Contemporary Social Problems: An Introduction to the Sociology of Deviant Behavior and Social Organizations (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), pp. 651-694; and Joanne M. Nigg, Putting the 'Public' Back into Concerns About Public Policy, Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Newsletter 14, No. 4 (1980), pp. 25-35.