Rethinking Participation, Rethinking Planning

Thorpe, Amelia

doi:10.1080/14649357.2017.1371788

Cited by 35 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…This reflection builds upon at least two traditions that we are trying to bring into conversation with each other. On the one hand, there is the central place that collaborative notions have gained within the planning literature, following the seminal work of authors such as Patsy Healey (1997) that have generated a rich debate about the places where planning and participation take place, both in and beyond collaborative spaces (see Brownill & Parker, 2010;Cornwall, 2002;Legacy, 2017;Miraftab, 2009;Natarajan, 2017;Thorpe, 2017;Watson, 2014). On the other hand, we refer to the tradition of southern urban critique, that has pushed the urban field not only towards a set of 'southern' locations, but more importantly to questions about where and how knowledge is produced and circulated, looking to decentre urban theory and practice (see Bhan, 2019;Harrison, 2006;Lawhon & Truelove, 2019;Robinson, 2006;Robinson & Parnell, 2011;Roy, 2009;Watson, 2002).…”

Section: Notes On Contributormentioning

confidence: 99%

People and Planning at Fifty/‘People and Planning’ 50 Years On: The Never-Ending Struggle for Planning to Engage with People/Skeffington: A View From The Coalface/From Participation to Inclusion/Marking the 50^th Anniversary of Skeffington: Reflections from a Day of Discussion/What to Commemorate? ‘Other’ International Milestones of Democratising City-Making/An American’s Reflections on Skeffington’s Relevance at 50

Inch

Sartorio

Bishop

et al. 2019

Planning Theory & Practice

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Fifty-years ago in 1969 People and Planning, the Report of the Committee on Public Participation in Planning, was published in the United Kingdom (Great Britain, 1969). Often referred to by the name of the Labour Member of Parliament who chaired it, the Skeffington Report is widely considered a key part of postwar planning history; marking one of the first official attempts to think through how publics could be meaningfully engaged in the production of plans. 1 The same year, of course, also saw the publication of Sherry Arnstein's seminal article on the Ladder of Citizen Participation in the Journal of the American Planning Association (JAPA) (Arnstein, 1969). Fifty years on, 2019 has therefore seen a series of publications and events marking these key moments in the development of contemporary planning theory and practice (see e.g. recent journal special issues: Built Environment, 2019a, 2019b; JAPA, 2019). As Alex Frediani and Camila Cociña argue, in their contribution to this Interface, what we choose to commemorate is always a political act, freighted with cultural significance and weighted by power-relations that determine what is, and is not, worth remembering. In this way, anniversaries matter, as acts of commemoration through which shared understandings and identities are forged. However, there is always a danger that the passage of time leads to the simplification of historical complexity, lending itself to a glib celebration of such milestones as so much evidence of the planning profession's commitment to progressive reformism, rather than prompting a deeper, more critical reflection on their significance. This risk is perhaps particularly marked with regard to public participation, an idea that has become firmly established as a 'good thing' within the ideology of contemporary planning and yet, whose realization fifty-years on arguably remains as elusive and problematic as ever. It was with this in mind that an event was held at the Town and Country Planning Association's offices in London on the 5 th of June, 2019 to: explore the lessons which can be learnt from the experiences of a range of actors and organisations over the decades and set out what will be the likely issues and the changes needed as we move forward into the next 50 years. Attended by around thirty people, most of the contributions to this Interface draw directly on the presentations and discussions that took place on the day. 2

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Section: Notes On Contributormentioning

confidence: 99%

People and Planning at Fifty/‘People and Planning’ 50 Years On: The Never-Ending Struggle for Planning to Engage with People/Skeffington: A View From The Coalface/From Participation to Inclusion/Marking the 50^th Anniversary of Skeffington: Reflections from a Day of Discussion/What to Commemorate? ‘Other’ International Milestones of Democratising City-Making/An American’s Reflections on Skeffington’s Relevance at 50

Inch

Sartorio

Bishop

et al. 2019

Planning Theory & Practice

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“…Communication within urban development processes needs to meet the current preferences, including social media (Ertiö, 2015;Nummi et al, 2018) yet participatory e-planning is still outside the mainstream urban development (Horelli, 2013). Meaningful participation would necessitate both informal and official formats of communication (Thorpe, 2017)…”

Section: Aesop / Young Academics Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Massey (2005) and van Holstein (2018) remind that communication on urban development should encourage subjective experiences rather than municipal expectations. A substantial participation requires a variety of everyday life activities, including both informal contributions and official roundtables (Thorpe, 2017). The case study art installation presented in this paper attempts to present data collected from its location as a conversational starting point.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Balloons to talk about

Hotakainen

Oikarinen

2019

plaNext

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Relational approaches to urban development have gained ground in academic literature, highlighting diverse perspectives, such as experience, participation, aesthetics, performativity and affection. However, these practices neglect conversation as a connection between local everyday life and urban development. We argue that as art generally provokes discussion, material art acquires potential to question urban development and thus, act as a conversation mediator in public space. To test the hypothesis, we organised an explorative action research study: a data art installation within the annual 'Oulu Night of the Arts' in August 2017. The installation illustrated spatiotemporal analysis of everyday life in Åström Park, Oulu, Northern Finland. The art intervention succeeded in engaging diverse social groups online and on-site, although it proved challenging to evoke focused conversations. The induced discussions bore relevance to everyday realities in the locality. If public discourse on urban environment concentrates solely on municipal urban planning projects and visible new constructions, we risk creating a misconception of them being superior to mundane everyday life. The study suggests that even tentative information without specific objectives, when presented in a public data installation, could prove valuable for urban development discourse.

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“…These debates have been addressed in the past. The limitations of collaborative or communication planning, and of what has called state-initiated co-production (Watson, 2014) have been widely problematised by existing literature (Watson, 2002;Harrison, 2006, Brownill andParker, 2010;Legacy, 2017;Thorpe, 2017). This critique is particularly relevant regarding the inability of such approaches to re-negotiate power imbalances in the planning processes and to provide responses to urban challenges in extremely unequal urban contexts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This critique is particularly relevant regarding the inability of such approaches to re-negotiate power imbalances in the planning processes and to provide responses to urban challenges in extremely unequal urban contexts. Notions such us insurgent planning (Miraftab, 2009), post-collaborative planning (Brownill and Parker, 2010) movement-initiated co-production (Watson, 2014), socio-spatial learning (Natarajan, 2017), participation as political (Legacy, 2017) and agonistic practices (Gunder, 2003;Mouat et al 2013;Thorpe, 2017;Yamamoto, 2017), are examples of approaches that see participation not only as a 'tool' for the implementation of planning, but as a form of planning itself. In this paper, we want to build upon such debates, exploring the diversity of strategies that people and movements are developing to respond to the limitations of planning disputing the meaning of it, which includes approaches that the referred literature has already captured.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

'Participation as Planning': Strategies from the South to Challenge the Limits of Planning

Frediani¹,

Cociña²

2019

built environ

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Participation and collaborative approaches to planning have become central in urban debates and practices. Critiques to the limitations of 'participation in planning' , however, have led to the development of a series of approaches that build beyond 'collaborative' understandings of planning. Approaches such as insurgent or post-collaborative planning, movement-initiated co-production, socio-spatial learning, agonistic practices or participation as political have moved the understanding of planning towards a wider spectrum of city-making practices, beyond disciplinary and professional boundaries, and in which some forms of participation become the very practice of planning. This article builds upon those debates, proposing an understanding of 'participation as planning'. Building on Southern urban theory, and recognising the difference between a discussion about participation and one that looks at planning through participation, the article proposes to recognise that there is a range of experiences of participatory city-making taking place in urban contexts, some of which fall into one of the referred categories, while others have remained as a 'blind-spot' in planning debates. The article identifies and discusses a series of strategies that have emerged from Southern contexts, and that represent ways of dealing with planning limits: Collective forms of spatial production that respond to the inadequacy of planning instruments to engage with diverse processes of city-making situated beyond dominant practices; partnership-oriented practices that react to the neoliberalisation and financialisation of planning; and advocacy-oriented practices to contest abusive planning practices which violate human rights.

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Rethinking Participation, Rethinking Planning

Cited by 35 publications

References 63 publications

Balloons to talk about

'Participation as Planning': Strategies from the South to Challenge the Limits of Planning

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