A Missing Citizen? Issue Based Citizenship in City‐Regional Planning

Abstract

City regions are significant sites of economic development, policymaking, and everyday living. Yet in many countries they are weakly institutionalized and therefore lack established democratic practices. This article is based on a study exploring citizen participation in city‐regional planning in Finland, where traditional participatory means have largely failed to invite and involve citizens. The analysis approaches city regions relationally, as evolving processes with a changing spatial shape and scope. Through the notion of lived citizenship, including the dimensions of status, practices and acts, the article reveals how the dominant ideas of citizenship in city‐regional planning hide from view elements that are significant for citizen participation. Whereas people's rights to participation can largely be fulfilled on a territorial basis in municipalities and states through legal membership in political communities, in the context of weakly institutionalized city‐regional planning such status‐based forms of participation are typically not available. This vagueness has created an image of a missing city‐regional citizenry, which the article sets out to challenge and rework through the notion of issue‐based participation as lived citizenship.

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

“…". On the other hand, it was confirmed that participatory mechanisms are institutionalized to a lesser degree than would be suitable [38], which is caused, among other factors, by the absence of methodological frameworks that would support participation in the planning process: [45] " . .…”

“…Participation in land-use planning is generally required by law [23], but this often takes on a mostly pro-forma character [37], and participatory mechanisms are very weakly institutionalized [38]. This explains why, in practice, steps that reinforce participation are rarely made voluntarily, and are instead mandated by legislation [39], which merely illustrates how little importance is accorded to participation by many politicians and experts [40].…”

Luonnon monimuotoisuus ja vihreä elvytys

“…Tämä tarkoittaa, että heidän on vaikea toimia tietoperustaisesti ympäristökansalaisina. Vastakkainasetteluja rakentuu helposti, mikä heikentää ympäristövastuullisen kansalaisyhteiskunnan kehitystä 65,66,67 . Tilannetta voidaan parantaa tukemalla kattavaa ympäristökasvatustoimintaa.…”

Lived citizenship: conceptualising an emerging field

“…It is here precisely that the idea of lived citizenship may help circumvent difficulties that sustain inequalities between city-regional dwellers. Instead of basing citizen participation on institutional capacity or professional expertise, city-regional citizenship can be enacted through the idea of "issue-based political agency", which centres on people's affective lived experiences and performed city-regionality (Pickard 2019; Häkli, Kallio, and Ruokolainen 2019). The premise in this approach is that, with limited motivation and resources to focus on generally politicized matters, people are inclined to direct attention to issues that concern or interest them particularly as they hold personal or social significance.…”

“…As researchers we have seen the utility of this concept in our own research; how it holds potential to uncover the agency of young citizens in fresh ways (e.g. Wood 2012; 2014; Wood and Kallio 2019), enables more flexible notions of space and interrelationships of citizens (Kallio and Mitchell 2016;Wood and Black 2018), and helps foreground gaps in existing forms of political belonging (Kallio, Häkli, and Bäcklund 2015;Häkli, Kallio, and Ruokolainen 2019). Such an approach opens up a whole realm of political insight which encompasses "the feelings, experiences, practices and actions of people outside the realm of formal politics" (Pain and Smith 2008, 2).…”