Public Participation for Our Times: On a Quest to Reconnect Planning and Politics in Public Engagement

Public participation in planning has always been contested in terms of its purpose, scope and the theoretical and ideological frameworks used to judge its efficacy. As a result, most research into public engagement has been highly critical, case-focussed and neglectful of wider governance contexts. Equally, most practice of this kind in the field of planning is found to be instrumental, ineffective and supportive of pro-development perspectives. In this paper, we argue that both the practice of, and research into, public participation in planning have largely failed to appreciate the implications of changing forms of state craft and that if effective public engagement remains an aspiration of Europe’s spatial planning systems, there is a need to develop theoretical frames that place this within wider understanding of State functioning, and the challenges this currently faces. This paper therefore seeks to stimulate debate on the current theory and practice of participation in planning whilst trying to bridge the narratives around public engagement in planning and local democracy discourses. It reviews the literature on engagement, highlighting how we should re-theorise planning as a societal practice rooted in wider social and political domains. It then explores potential links between individuals’ actions, local groups’ and networks’ formations and the dominant forms of state, governance and political action. The paper would fit well into Track 7. Bridging the gap between the academic discourses of participatory planning and local democracy