How to Connect Participatory Governance, Citizen Participation and Co-Creation – A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Citizen Participation in Shaping Local Cycling Policies

As awareness and evidence of the negative externalities of automobility have risen, the ‘conventional’ top-down, technocentric and expert driven transport planning approach has been increasingly problematized. A growing body of literature has, instead, documented the value of citizen participation in transport policy. Proponents of citizen participation in transport policy expect a plethora of benefits, including the development of more effective and (cost) efficient mobility plans, the prevention of opposition and failure of a plan, the development of a sense of ownership of decisions as well as a sense of responsibility among politicians and citizens. In Germany, citizens increasingly demand participation in transport policy and especially in the promotion of cycling. The so-called bicycle referenda lobby for cyclists’ rights and what cycling can bring to cities. They started as a group of activists, scientists and urban planners in Berlin and currently spread all over the country. People in Berlin, Bamberg, Stuttgart and Darmstadt collect signatures in order to force city administrations to ameliorate cycling conditions in their cities. In Berlin and Bamberg, the activists were able to bring about new legal regulations in favor of cycling after decades of subordination of cycling practices and needs. Citizen participation in cycling promotion – that is able to transform transport policies – has been seldom the focus of studies about urban transition processes. In addition, political science research on the functioning of this new generation of activists with its innovative forms of citizen participation and their effects on local politics is still scarce. Therefore, this paper asks which concepts and theories can help to explain the functioning and effects of civil society initiatives in shaping urban cycling policies? Drawing on a participatory governance perspective, participation theories and the concept of co-creation, I develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of these innovative forms of citizen participation. With the help of the participatory governance perspective, I grasp the political steering and coordination at the urban level. Governance approaches in general ask how and by whom collectively binding decisions are made and acknowledge a wide variety of actors in decision-making processes. The participatory variant puts emphasis on citizen participation and democratic engagement. The framework then focuses on those forms of citizen participation in which citizens take an active role as co-creators in the policy-making process. Co-creation is understood as the active involvement of citizens in the initiation and/ or design process of public services in order to co-create beneficial outcomes. In this framework, I bring different strands of literature together that have not been thought together yet, but enable me to better understand innovative forms of citizen participation in cycling policies. The framework is briefly illustrated and connected to an empirical context through a discussion of the case of the Berlin Bicycle Referendum.