Participatory Planning at the Crossroads?

Participatory Planning at the Crossroads? The paper will discuss the current state of participatory planning in the context of Germany. After a boom period of participatory planning in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, the debate on participatory planning experiences a phase of disillusion. In many cases, participatory planning did not meet the expectations of the planners and the citizens but caused bitter conflicts. Major projects such as Stuttgart 21 questioned the new participatory planning culture. So we experience a more realistic view on participatory planning in the context of Germany. While legal obligations for participation are met, new ways of participation such as deliberative mini-publics are rarely used. Participation has become a technical exercise. The recent turn towards urban living labs has a limited impact on this. The paper will discuss this trend along two theoretic perspectives: deliberative democracy and science-policy arrangements.