Tokenism or Political Activism? Some Reflections on Participatory Planning

Abstract

With the communicative turn in planning theory and the emergence of governance, public participation has become a central issue with respect to inclusionary discourse and the institutionalization of more democratic planning practices. A multitude of participatory planning practices have been implemented with reference to different theoretical perspectives and technical approaches ranging from the traditional to the radical model. Although the current debate about these different participatory activities has brought to the fore an increasing gap between rhetoric and the reality of various models, there are few attempts to compare them in practice. A comparison of participatory activities according to traditional/tokenist and radical models, respectively, should be of interest in the current debate on the crisis of participatory planning and barriers to the institutionalization of participatory planning. This paper discusses tokenist participation in the development planning of Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm, Sweden and political activism in a deprived community, Enziteto in Bari, Italy. These two different examples of planner–'community' interaction show the necessity to understand power politics that underlie the ideal of public participation in planning.

Acknowledgements

The authors of this paper are grateful to three anonymous referees and the editor of this journal for their extremely useful comments and suggestions. They owe a particular debt to EW who shared their life-stories, their hopes and aspirations in order to improve their neighbourhood, as well as planners in Bari and Stockholm who took time off to talk to us. They are too numerous to name individually but thanks are extended to them all.