Envisioning just and democratic citizen participation in urban planning and governance – is Citizen Participation inclusive?
by Oishika Basak
Citizen participation can play a key role in contemporary urban planning, but its current implementation is not without critiques, especially when it comes to inclusion, tokenisation, and power asymmetries. In this article by ISOCARP Institute intern Oishika Basak, she highlights an approach to participation founded on principles of justice, equity and power redistribution.
In the past decade, the popularity of citizen-led projects, and more top-down citizen participation and engagement mechanisms have increased manifold. A simple search of the term “citizen participation” on any internet browser shows numerous results from organisations like the OECD, the United Nations, the European Union, and local governments or research institutes vouching for the benefits of engaging citizens in decision-making for a more sustainable and inclusive world. Terms like ‘citizen participation’, ‘citizen engagement’, and ‘co-creation’ in urban planning and governance have emerged as buzzwords, and have often been heralded as a cornerstone of democratic societies (Arnstein, 1969).
Although the term citizen participation has been conceived in various ways in different contexts and with varied goals in mind, its main aim has been to involve different stakeholders in policy-making (Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018). Its definition is rather broad, referring to the various ways in which citizens can be involved in decision-making processes to enable the reflection of their interests, needs and values in local plans and projects (Glimmerveen et al., 2022; Ianniello et al., 2019; Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018). Citizen participation has been hailed as a powerful instrument with which citizens can hold their governments accountable through active citizenship beyond voting and elections (Avis, 2016; Chakrabarti, 2007; Esau, 2007), thereby increasing their influence over their immediate urban environment (Stapper & Duyvendak, 2020).
Within the domain of urban planning and governance over the past decade, there has been a change in discourse from whether participation is needed to the acceptance that “well-organised and well-executed participation” (Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018, p. 2) can yield benefits for the planning process. Hence, engaging citizens in policymaking has been deemed as a ‘good thing’ in planning and governance, by scholars, and policy-makers alike. The contemporary relevance of crucial topics like just and inclusive sustainability transitions and more specifically people-centric policies for energy transition, engaging citizens in decision-making processes has increasingly become popular. Within this frame has come an increase in people-led initiatives and even top-down processes of giving people and their communities a key stake in decision-making and governance for a better urban future. Hence during a time of its heightened popularity and recognition, it is key that we look at the other side of things – or the criticism that has been levelled against the participation practices. This is particularly because the very conceptualisation of citizen participation is riddled with contentious political questions (Arnstein, 1969) of ‘whose voices are heard and why’. This article provides an overview of some of the key critiques and offers some pathways towards envisioning just and democratic citizen participation.
CRITICISM
Over time, citizen participation and its use as a governance tool have received a generous amount of criticism. The critiques can be grouped into the following three categories:
1. LACK OF DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION OF STAKEHOLDER GROUPS
The first category of criticism is related to the failure of citizen participation processes in including the actors who remain historically and systemically marginalised. Hence, the heightened visibility of wealthier, more influential or powerful people, the greater capacity and ability of the privileged class to regularly take part in participation processes and hence become a ‘known face’, and the sheer absence of minority voices, are commonly cited observations in many studies across the world (Glimmerveen et al., 2022; Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018; Tonkens & Verhoeven, 2019). This lack of diversity is detrimental because it goes against the basic tenets of citizen participation and the very reason why engaging citizens in decision-making processes is important: involving the perspectives of the people who are affected by the governance decisions and policies.
Although participation can be a fruitful method of involving citizens, it could further social inequalities by excluding stakeholders that lack social capital (Stapper & Duyvendak, 2020). Scholars have shown that it is more accessible for the affluent and well educated to access the spaces of participation than the poor who often lack the resources, in terms of time, money and even self-esteem to participate (Esau, 2007). Although citizen participation is expected and often deemed to strengthen democracy (Tamano, 2021), the exclusion of certain people can also become a normalised byproduct of it. In some cases, citizen participation processes are even designed to ensure the systematic exclusion of some people (Glimmerveen et al., 2022).
One example can be seen in Chakrabarti’s (2007) study of the effects of the institutionalised citizen participation system (Bhagidari) on Delhi’s urban poor. Here, the restriction of the participation mechanisms to the planned parts or the middleclass neighbourhoods of Delhi, meant that the exclusion of the poor (who lived outside the planned or middle-class neighbourhoods) was built into the participatory design and governance structure. Hence, when we talk about the need to make participation more representative and diverse, it is equally important that policy-makers identify who the excluded actors and over-represented actors are, as well as which participation mechanisms are leading to the exclusion or how they can be designed in a way that helps poorer and/or less educated people to participate.
2. THE TOKENISATION OF CITIZEN PARTICIPATION
Successful participation processes can be beneficial in enabling individuals to play a more active role (Smith, 1973) in their communities or neighbourhoods. However, the use of citizen participation as a tokenistic and performative tool to find solutions to a problem without the actual redistribution of power is a reality. To establish that their policies have received the approval of the citizens (Huisman, 2014) governments can at times engage in such a tactic. This sort of tokenisation is in the form of a ‘box-ticking’ exercise wherein people’s voices and recommendations seldom manifest in actual plans or policies (Stapper & Duyvendak, 2020).
In a time when the combined effects of the devasting climate crisis and rising social inequalities are impacting the everyday lives of numerous people, tokenistic practices in participation mechanisms are immensely detrimental. Considering the complex and interdependent nature of many such contemporary issues, there is an imminent need for academia, policy-makers, practitioners, and (private and public) institutions to engage in collaborative ways of re-envisioning citizen participation in a more bottom-up way. This could also mean thinking beyond simply asking for citizen’s perspectives on issues but enabling local communities to take the lead in setting the agenda and defining the issues at hand. Hence, it’s also thinking along the lines of how to ensure that citizens are not always at the receiving end of deliberative governance but are actively leading discussions.
3. POWER ASYMMETRIES AND CITIZENS’ LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR RIGHTS
Citizen Participation without the redistribution of power especially to those who are marginalised can be a futile exercise, scholars like Arnstein (1969) have pointed out. Over the years, studies have shown that participation is more accessible to the rich and educated. In fact, not all citizens possess the same level of knowledge/awareness about participation opportunities, how to take part in them, even their civil and political rights, and how they can influence decision-making (Esau, 2007). These varied levels of awareness should be a key consideration for governments when devising participatory governance and planning processes.
Moreover, inequality in participation in urban neighbourhoods occurs on the one hand through the over-representation of a certain demographic – the privileged; and on the other hand, through the exclusion of ethnic minorities, lower-educated people and those who are in a weaker position by virtue of their age, and gender (Tonkens and Verhoeven, 2019). In a study conducted in different urban neighbourhoods of Amsterdam, it was found that various arm-twisting tactics were used by dominant actors like the municipality and housing corporations to displace people from their homes to actualise the state-gentrification policy (Huisman, 2014). This illustrated the power asymmetry between different actors caused by the lack of knowledge of the citizens’ rights and even the power to resist. Such an example shows that in some situations state actors can benefit from the citizens’ lack of awareness to fulfil their agenda. Hence, participation can cause or enhance injustices when no power is transferred to the citizens, particularly the marginalised and vulnerable communities (Huisman, 2014).
MOVING BEYOND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AS JUST A BUZZWORD
Bottom-up decision-making through citizen panels, advisory bodies, neighbourhood meetings, and representatives to government committees, are widely used mechanisms. To ensure the efficacy of such participation processes, it is important to take a step back and check if, firstly, participation is actually leading to the re-distribution of power to citizens, and secondly, if participation is
representative.
Thus, the critiques highlighting the inclusion and exclusion of people from participation processes, the tokenisation of citizen participation, and the power asymmetry between actors caused by the lack of knowledge of the citizens’ rights (and access to knowledge), bring to the fore a crucial point: the unequal involvement of people is not only a result of their socio-economic background but also the institutions and structures that are systemically and inherently unjust (Byskov, 2021; Herzog & Lepenies, 2022). Hence, the asymmetries in power and opportunities that different sections of a population have are also complemented by ‘systematic biases’ in policy, wherein the privileged have a much greater influence on policy (Drèze and Sen, 2002).
In the recent drive to make decision-making more just and inclusive, it becomes imperative to understand who gets left behind in these participatory processes, and whose voices get heard or amplified. The current discourses on bringing in innovative practices to citizen participation could gain from a more concerted effort towards envisioning just and democratic participation in a way that places common people at the core of decision-making. However, in doing so, it is important that we don’t follow the trope that citizen participation is the best thing to do in urban planning and governance.
Envisioning just and democratic decision-making is also understanding that not every decision can and has to be taken through deliberative practices, as well as the fact that not every citizen is interested in participating or can participate. It is about thinking along the lines of how decision-making can be made more inclusive, and how can we improve the engagement of those communities that do not participate but want to participate. Policymakers and governments, in general, would benefit from a deep dive into peoples’ similar or differential reasons behind participating; their expectations and goals concerning the participation processes from their neighbourhood, city, or region, and their local governments; situations deterring them from participating or the types of difficulties they face.
References
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Byskov, M. F. (2021). What Makes Epistemic Injustice an “Injustice”? Journal of Social Philosophy, 52(1), 114–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/josp.12348
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