Participation In Urban Development Research Articles

Creating an “in-between”: The post-migrant perspective and participatory urban development in Germany, a comparison between Berlin and Wiesbaden

ABSTRACT In this article, we show how the post-migrant perspective fosters inclusive participatory urban development without reproducing the “either/or” logic of ethno-cultural origin that distinguishes between migrants and natives. Based on empirical research with local administrators and community organizers in the German cities of Berlin and Wiesbaden, we identify two key findings. First, we found that a multicultural understanding of migration—based on a gap between migrants and natives—still dominates in participatory urban development. Second, we show how participation practices overcame the migrant-native divide by mobilizing liminal in-between identities, negotiated at the boundaries of class, milieu, age, and neighborhood. We argue that participation based on the post-migrant perspective is inclusive by virtue of its ambiguity. It allows participants to decide what perspective they wish to adopt or how they position themselves in participation—without being reduced to a status as migrants.

Participatory Budgeting and Placemaking: Concepts, Methods, and Practices

Participatory budgeting has arisen as an interesting form of citizen participation in urban development and, thus, as a new way of exercising placemaking and grassroots democracy. In this article, we provide an analysis of projects in Lisbon (Portugal), Valencia (Spain), and Warsaw (Poland) with a focus on three key projects concerned with improving the public realm and their contribution to enhancing the network of public open spaces. Our guiding question is: What are the potential benefits of participatory budgeting to increase green spaces and urban governance? A comparison of the three cities’ participatory budgeting programmes provides an overview of their social and political goals and the contents that provide opportunities for citizens’ participation in decision-making. The cases of Jardim do Caracol da Penha (Lisbon), the Green Street Świętokrzyska (Warsaw), and the Green Plan for the Poblats Marítims District (Valencia) pave the way for a discussion on engagement, empowerment, and connectivity with the local communities through public spaces. Using participatory budgeting as a planning and political instrument at the municipal level, as the three cases show, can be a useful way to enhance and enrich the communities’ engagement with their environments. One aspect that emerged is the communication strategies implemented in the three cases. The analysis shows that the use of media and social networks to disseminate information and gather supporters for their ideas and this growth in political influence seems to be essential for participatory budgeting. The study is backed by desk work (comprehensive understanding of the local programmes) and field work to better identify the changes in loco.

Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e-participation platforms, location-based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development.

The Interaction of Society and Authorities in Urban Development: The Case of Big Cities of Northwestern Federal District

The balanced urban development, the formation of a comfortable urban environment, including the citizens’ active participation in these processes is a priority in the strategic objectives and national projects of the Russian Federation. To reveal the essence of the interactions between society and government the author uses the concept of “civic participation” as a process by which public associations or individuals are involved in interactions with the state (vertical interaction), with other socio-political institutions among themselves (horizontal interaction) to solve socially significant problems. Based on quantitative (questionnaire survey of the urban population, N = 2000) and qualitative (expert interviews, N = 47) methods tested in 5 large cities of the Northwestern Federal District, the author reveals the features of offline and online practices of interaction between the public and authorities, as well as the conditions for their formation in urban development issues. The author concludes that such practices as contacting the authorities and participating in initiative budgeting are more widespread in the cities than, for example, protest participation on the city’s issues. Despite the preference for offline practices for constructive interactions between society and authorities, the active use of information resources and online services is becoming timely. The institutional environment of civic participation is provided with formal regulators, but urban residents are far from being fully informed about them and are not aware of the legal opportunities and limitations that determine their participation in urban development. Informal norms as part of the institutional environment, on the one hand, contribute to the formation of sustainable interactions and organizational infrastructure of socially useful activity; on the other hand, they can be based on the illegal practice of manipulating statuses and resources, which causes the growth of public distrust of state and municipal authorities. The article substantiates the importance of forming a unified information field at the city level on the topical issues of concern to residents, on possible formats of civic participation in the development of a comfortable urban environment. The findings contribute to the understanding of the problems and opportunities for the use of civic participation in urban development.

Actors in the development of non-capital industrial cities of Tatarstan in the vision and assessment of their residents

The purpose of the article the author sees as the identification of actors of non-capital industrial cities of Tatarstan, the clarification of their relationship and forms of participation in urban development. The activities of urban communities and their leaders are considered in the article from the standpoint of its perception by residents, in terms of influencing their decision to stay in the city/leave it.
 The exploratory nature of the study led to the use of the method of group problem-oriented interviews carried out by the author in 2021 during reconnaissance field trips to the cities of Tatarstan: Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk, Almetyevsk, Zelenodolsk. They took place in families that made it possible to increase the number of interviewees, compare the opinions of different generations and achieve a comfortable atmosphere for conducting interviews, and were accompanied by notes.
 The study preliminary confirmed the hypothesis that the key players in non-capital industrial settlements in Russia are the municipal authorities and communities that develop around their leading enterprises. The significance of both in different cities varies, that depends on the industry, functional affiliation of industries and a number of subjective factors, primarily on the ability of leaders-managers to build a strategy and tactics of participation in urban processes. The main forms of such participation for manufacturing companies are: social support for employees, sponsorship of city events, inclusion in regional programmes to improve the urban environment and the implementation of their own projects in the field of healthcare, specialised and general education, sports, culture, and city spaces. Representatives of the city administration more often perform not only managerial functions, but also act as a link between the actors of urban processes. Individual small and medium-sized businesses take part in the latter, and the role of cultural workers depends on the development of the cultural environment of the city. The practices of urban activists are limited to single actions, although activism is revealed at the level of courtyards and volunteer movements. It has been empirically confirmed that a significant contribution to the development of the cities of Tatarstan is made by regional authorities. In the indicated context, the life strategies of citizens reveal complex trajectories that depend, among other things, on the activities of the actors under consideration that affect the level and quality of life in the city, and residents´ opportunities for self-realisation.

Socially and culturally sustainable public participation in urban development: Map questionnaire as a bridge-building tool in Kontula shopping mall

Social sustainability is a prerequisite for legitimate public participation. Currently, multilingualism and multiculturalism place particular demands on participation methods and processes. This article presents a case study where entrepreneurs with an immigrant background were engaged in the development process of Kontula shopping mall in Helsinki, Finland. The results show that an existing digital participation tool, specifically a map questionnaire can be utilized in a novel way in a multicultural context to build a bridge between this marginalized group and urban development. New skills and tailored methods are required to support the participation of immigrant entrepreneurs.

Social strategies for urban management and urban-environment development in the works of T. M. Dridze and in contemporary Russia

In the pre- and early post-reform Russian urban sociology, the works of T.M. Dridze, a prominent Russian sociologist and psychologist, are of a great importance. Her concepts of urban development, social participation and urban environment reflect the democratic approach to urban development and urban social management. Under the dominant liberal, market-oriented urban regulation, this approach was considered almost marginal. However, after the adoption in 2016 of the federal project for developing a ‘comfortable urban environment’, the rhetoric of ‘environment’ and ‘participation’ started to prevail in both society and urban social sciences. The question is whether the ideas and theoretical models of the democratic urban planning started to determine the contemporary urban development. To answer this question, the author clarifies the content of the basic terms used by T.M. Dridze and her interpretation of the relationships between the environment, society and participatory technologies; reveals the methodological role of social participation and defines it as a scale of social practices - from the grassroot ‘activism’ to the ‘participation from above’ initiated by the authorities. The author conducts a conceptualterminological analysis to compare three strategies of urban development: urban construction, urban regulation and urban arrangement, and only the last one seems to be consistently democratic. The analysis of the texts and methods of the federal project allows the author to make conclusions about the certain qualities of this project. Thus, the project replaces the democratic socialenvironmental type of social participation in urban development - planning, implementation, assessment of results - by the improvement of urban areas as controlled by the authorities. This means that the works of T.M. Dridze are still relevant for the democratic urban studies and urban development.

Architects of Markets: The Creation and Diffusion of the Bus Rapid Transit Market, 1969-1999

Delivering quality public services to cities’ inhabitants is an increasingly pressing issue. With limited resources to address citizens’ needs, local governments increasingly find the need to engage in entrepreneurship to develop novel solutions for old urban problems. However, we lack an understanding of the entrepreneurial efforts of local governments. Specifically, we lack an understanding of how local governments embrace urban entrepreneurialism to foster private market participation in urban development. We investigate this question through the case of the creation of the bus rapid transit market in Brazil. We develop a process model that explains how local governments architect the creation and diffusion of new markets through relational, material, and symbolic practices, and clarifies the connection between specific micro-institutional practices and market development over time. Our research contributes to the study of state entrepreneurship and market formation.

Exploring the relationship between trust and participatory processes: Participation in urban development in Oslo, Madrid and Melbourne

Exploring the relationship between trust and participatory processes: Participation in urban development in Oslo, Madrid and Melbourne

Erzählen im Reallabor. Ein Beitrag zur konzeptionellen Ausgestaltung partizipativer Methoden der gemeinsamen Wissensproduktion durch Erzählräume im Reallabor

The transdisciplinary intersection between science and society in the real-world-laboratory approach is seen as a potential for generating transformational knowledge. At the same time, there are open questions in the methodological implementation, which are addressed in this paper by insights on experimental formats of storytelling. Using the example of the research project INTERPART, this paper explores the questions how intercultural spaces of participation in urban development can be expanded and what changes in institutional processes are required to achieve this. The paper involves two academic disciplines – spatial planning and design research – and fields of practice. Central findings include how deliberately designed narrative situations promote the co-production of transformative knowledge by encouraging participation in research and engaging citizens as experts of everyday life in co-research. The paper thus contributes to the current discourse on participatory research and co-production of knowledge in the context of methodological differentiation of real-world laboratory approaches.

Participatory Urban Development in India: A Tale of Two Townships

This paper intends to offer a critical understanding of citizen engagement in the process of city making using two case studies within the Indian context, namely, Magarpatta City in Maharashtra and Auroville in Tamil Nadu. As an initial foray into the issue, it engages with contemporary discourses on the scope and nature of public participation in urban development within the framework of a neoliberal economy. This is followed by a qualitative analysis based on unstructured interviews, which capture the live experiences of the local landowners and residents in each location. The findings indicate that citizen engagement is instrumental in producing socially equitable urbanization. If harnessed well, it offers the possibility for an effective departure from the traditional state-market dynamics, which presently underlie forms of neoliberal urbanism in developing countries. This paper, therefore, makes the case for mainstreaming citizen participation for urban development as an attempt to create a sustainable built environment that caters to the needs of citizens.

Driving Forces of Citizen Participation in Urban Development Practice in Harare, Zimbabwe

Citizen participation enhances urban development by contributing to the attainment of inclusive, sustainable and resilience cities. However, citizen participation is not a given because cities are arenas of conflict where different stakeholders claim their right to the city citizen participation is not a given in cities. We argue that citizen participation is constructed and influenced by multiple factors that benefit the elites while disadvantaging the poor. Three case studies (informal settlers in Hopley Farm Settlement, street vendors at Coca Cola vending site and civil society group at Monavale Vlei) in Harare, Zimbabwe were used to determine the drivers of citizen participation in urban development. Data were collected through primary and secondary data sources that include questionnaires, interviews with selected city officials and document analysis. NVivo 12 Pro enabled the thematic and content analysis of the secondary data and the interviews while Kobo data collector was used to aid the data collection and analysis from the questionnaires. The findings reveal that the legislation provide for limited ‘citizen’ participation in urban development, especially for the poor due to the construction of citizenship. Moreover, politicians also manipulate the participation process through clientism and at times democratic channels were not considered while the lack of civic culture to participate among the citizens has also been noted. We conclude that the citizens’ ability and motive to participate tends to be limited, and at times based on classism as evident from the case of Monavale Vlei.

Deliberative Democracy and the Paradox of Participation

Citizen involvement and participatory governance have been adopted as essential components of urban development policies in many countries. For instance, participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre was successful in mobilizing and empowering poor people. However, in many cases, participation is merely a buzzword which often leads to co‐optation. In this article, we propose an explanatory model of participatory governance for making comparative analyses and compare participatory budgeting in the 1990s in Brazil with the Japanese community policy of the 1970s. Based on this, our analysis identifies the paradox of participation and the importance of gatekeeping functions. As a consequence of enhanced citizen participation, the power of the bureaucratic administration becomes dominant unless politicians and the legislature retain their autonomy in decision‐making. If the gatekeeping functions of involvement and decision‐making are monopolized by the administrative body urban development is de‐politicized, which, in turn, leads to co‐optation by government and exclusion. It is important to retain the function of politics to deepen democracy through citizen participation in urban development.

Social Participation of the Russian and Armenian Students in the Socio-Cultural Development of Cities

The article was prepared on the basis of an international comparative study – a sociological survey of students from regional universities from 37 cities in the Sverdlovsk region of the Russian Federation and 20 settlements of the Shirak region in the Republic of Armenia (targeted sample, No. = 715). The authors explore the potential for social participation of students from countries with a common political background of post-socialism and cardinal differences in the cultural and historical heritage of urban spaces.The purposeof this article is to determine the potential for social participation of students of regional universities in Russia and Armenia and the subjective factors that determine their activity in the development of cities. The article analyzes the experience of volunteering, as well as the willingness of students to different types of constructive social participation in urban development. To identify factors that activate the social participation of students, a discriminant analysis has been used. Discriminant models were constructed dividing groups of students from different countries with a high and low degree of readiness for social participation, as well as into groups with and without volunteering experience. The authors argue that Russia and Armenia are characterized by an identical structure of student involvement in volunteer activities, but the level of students’ readiness for social participation in urban development in the countries under consideration is different. For Armenian students, not only the willingness for social participation is higher, but also the practices themselves are more associated with active socio-cultural activities in the urban space. Two factors that determine the experience of real participation in the socio-cultural development of cities are characteristic of both Russian and Armenian students. The real experience of volunteering is more likely to be acquired by those students who are motivated to receive information about the culture and history of their cities, as well as the ability to see and identify significant cultural and historical objects where they live and study. In the Russian scenario, the importance of the city, the need for its development increases for students if they, being armed with certain knowledge about its culture and history, consider that the city is an interesting object (including a tourist one) for promotion. For Armenian students, knowledge of the culture and history of their place of birth is a basic factor that shapes their interest in further exploring their cities, the desire to make them better.

A minimal viable process and tools for massive participation in urban development

The paper aims at providing a framework for enabling massive citizen participation in urban planning projects. Derived from a structured analysis of existing formal and informal citizen participation processes in urban development we developed a comprehensive process supported by a set of digital tools for massive participation. This so-called minimal viable process fulfils: a) good practice standards for participation while b) utilising as few as possible technical means and procedural steps. The newly developed procedure ensures proper citizen involvement from the very start of a project up to design selection. The framework involves all necessary stakeholder groups, who are addressed by specific tools and algorithms. The results of a test run indicate the general applicability of the process and the tools, and provided insight for the further technical development of the IT tools and the procedure itself within the H2020 project U_CODE Urban Collective Design Environment.

A minimal viable process and tools for massive participation in urban development

A minimal viable process and tools for massive participation in urban development

A method for the assessment of public participation in urban development

Abstract A comprehensive piece of research on the tools and methods available for public participation in urban development was carried out as part of the U_CODE Urban Collective Design Environment H2020-ICT Project, the results of which are presented in this paper. Approximately 70 methods and a range of participation goals were identified by investigating the publications of 20 cities and participation networks in Germany plus a number of online participation platforms. In the descriptions a general distinction was made between the level of involvement and the objective of participation. For most of the goals on informational or cooperation level, several (especially offline) tools were found to be available. For more ambitious objectives, e.g. massive co-design, no appropriate tools are currently market-ready, yet several research and development projects are targeting the development and testing of such means. The strong development of more complex methods and tools can be expected within the next few years. Often these instruments are designed in cooperation with urban authorities, however their broad application in German municipalities may take a couple of years yet.

Sustainable solid waste management in developing countries: a study of institutional strengthening for solid waste management in Johannesburg, South Africa

This paper discusses the impacts of solid waste on human health and environmental wellbeing in Johannesburg, South Africa. Using both secondary and primary data collected through semi-structured interviews with members of a local community of Windsor, municipal officials and other stakeholders involved in solid waste management (SWM) in Johannesburg, it finds that mismanagement of solid waste negatively affects the urban environment and human health, leading to reduced productivity and economic growth. Further, it is argued that ineffective SWM must be seen as a consequence both of institutionalised failure to implement and enforce urban policies and regulations and a parallel failure to recognise the importance of private agents and community participation in urban development and management. Developing an effective and sustainable SWM system in Johannesburg requires city authorities to devolve resources and authority to local level along with clear guidelines and strategies to strengthen local management processes.

Social Participation of Russian and Polish Students in Urban Development

This paper is devoted to the problem of engaging youth in the formation of sustainable urban environment. A particular focus is on the role of universities as research and educational centres in this process. The problem was analyzed from two perspectives. On the one hand, an analysis was carried out to assess the activity of students as the actors contributing to the formation of urban environment, as well as the level of their involvement in constructive social practices and readiness for social and cultural participation in urban life. On the other hand, specifi c institutional and socio-cultural features of urban environment, which determine the social activity of youth, were investigated. Russia and Poland were selected as the objects of analysis, mainly because these countries share a common socio-cultural, ideological and historical heritage. The research methodology involved a secondary analysis of published data and a survey among Russian and Polish university students. The respondents were selected using the method of targeted sampling and included 465 and 248 respondents from Russia and Poland, respectively. As a result, a number of differences between the countries were identifi ed. In Poland, a shift towards non-formalised social practices and non-institutionalised forms of participation is evident. Russia, however, shows the opposite trend, which involves formalisation and bureaucratization of youth social participation through centralisation of programmes and projects, as well as unifi cation of approaches used to encourage youth activity. Polish youth demonstrates a higher social activity and a higher level of trust in NPOs, as well as orientation towards democratic values. For Russian students, a submissive position with respect to the city authorities as the main subject of urban development was found to be more typical. Although, in general, Russian and Polish students demonstrate similar patterns of participation in urban development, the former are more focused on its collective forms, while the latter are oriented at individualisation. The obtained results provide for a deeper understanding of the nature of youth participation in the socio-cultural development of cities. Our fi ndings can be used in practice for the development of university strategies aimed at promotion of student social engagement.

Public participation in NIMBY risk mitigation: A discourse zoning approach in the Chinese context

“Not in my back yard” (NIMBY) is a wicked problem in China’s rapid urbanization. The types and interests of the stakeholders are complex and the risks are constantly changing over the facilities’ life course. NIMBY indicates the necessity of public participation in urban development. The questions faced by Chinese policy-makers are whom and how to involve the public in NIMBY risk mitigation plan. This paper develops a discourse zoning approach for promoting public participation in NIMBY risk mitigation over public facilities’ whole life course. It applies the approach into Diantou historic district renewal in China to estimate the discourse power of different public groups in the process of site selection, construction, operation, and eventual abandonment of the NIMBY facility. And then assigned the discourse power in public hearings. Results show that local stakeholders considered this approach could maximize the participation of public groups and balance their weights in decision-making process.