Between consultation and partnership: participation styles in Swedish urban revitalization processes involving disabled people

ABSTRACT

Inclusive urban design relies on the participation of disabled persons. This study examines how the involvement of this group is perceived and managed in three revitalization initiatives applying current legal and moral requirements, e.g. ‘universal design’. Qualitative content analysis was conducted on go-along interviews and participant observation in projects related to public places and buildings in three Swedish cities. Two participation styles were developed: Consultation and Partnership. Officials were focused on Consultation while disability organizations desired Partnership. There were overlapping styles in terms of organization, identification, and internal tensions, leading to misunderstandings about collaboration, participants’ legitimacy, and opportunities for influence.

KEYWORDS:

• Participation
• urban planning
• universal design
• disability
• public spaces

Introduction

In the 1960s, Lefebvre argued that all have a right to be part of the city life and Davidoff wanted planners, designers, and architects to become democratic protagonists and advocates of minority groups (Taylor 1998). More than half a century later, some people still feel excluded and uncomfortable in public space. Physical barriers, such as stairs, entail physical pain and hinder people with mobility impairments directly. Even innovations may worsen the situation. Lawson et al. (2022) found that shared spaces without kerbs, and orientation cues, confuse and jeopardize the environment for visually impaired people.

Bonehill, von Benzon, and Shaw (2020) found that spatial exclusion generates strong emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, anxiety, and frustration. This may indirectly, in the long run, lead to unemployment, inactivity, depression, and early death (Langballe et al. 2022). Egard, Hansson, and Wästerfors (2022) found that the experiences of disabled people are contradicted by numerous policies for inclusion, creating disillusion. Merely the existence of laws and obligations offers no guarantee for compliance. These authors found continuing ‘societal resistance to accessibility for persons with disabilities’. This highlights the need for further research on the involvement of disabled people in urban design processes.

This paper aims to explore styles of participation in inclusive urban design, involving disabled people as user expertise. The research addresses the question: How is the participation of disabled people perceived and managed in urban design processes? The studied processes concern the revitalization of public places and buildings in three Swedish cities.

By applying the citizen perspective, the paper complements studies of the attitudes of officials and politicians (Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015). It contributes insights into the practice and dilemmas of including disabled people in urban design processes. Drawing from Arnstein’s ladder of participation, Consultation and Partnership will be elaborated on as oppositional models, thus contributing to the knowledge base for deepening citizen participation around the world.

Theoretical framework and related research

The concept of citizen participation will here be introduced and related to the Swedish context. References to ‘disabled people’ are in line with the ‘social model’ of disability, where bodily impairments are separated from the experience of being excluded and hindered – disabled – by environmental factors like urban design (Degener 2016).

Legal and moral requirements in the Swedish context

Though Halvorsen and Sandlie (2012) argue that Swedish society relies more on legal regulation than Norway and Denmark there is no specific law with accessibility standards like the ADA in the USA. The paragraph making ‘lacking accessibility’ a form of discrimination, introduced in the Anti-discrimination Act in 2015, is seldomly used in court. What may differ from other countries is the strong legal position of municipalities – since 1971, encompassing both towns and the countryside (Larsson 2010). Municipal governments are responsible for all land use planning, implementation, and control of compliance with the laws, including accessibility measures.

The first accessibility demands were introduced in 1966 to make public buildings accessible for persons with mobility impairment – some years later expanded to those with orientation difficulties (Andersson 2022). Legal requirements are complemented with detailed binding regulations on accessibility and usability in public places and retroactive requirements to remove obstacles in existing public buildings and places. Discretionary standards and guidelines from the National Board of Housing, Building, and Planning are used.

The current Planning and Building Act has a general policy claim for accessible and usable environments combined with specific regulations for the relevant groups. The law ‘aims at promoting a societal development with appropriate and equal living conditions for all’ (Andersson 2022, 189). Since 2017, following EU law, procurement encompasses the needs of all users, including persons with impairments. Procurement is an underutilized tool for achieving accessibility according to Müller, Ericsson, and Hedvall (2022).

As part of the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations 2006) – hereafter UNCRPD – universal design has been introduced into various Swedish national and local policies to make disability part of human diversity, avoiding retrofit adaptations and stigmatizing design for certain groups (Erdtman, Rassmus-Gröhn, and Hedvall 2022). New ‘goods, products, facilities, technologies, and services’ should apply universal design (United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2014, 5). The Swedish understanding of the concept resembles Steinfeld and Maisel’s (2012, 11) definition of universal design as ‘a process that enables and empowers a diverse population’.

Besides physical requirements, there are expectations on diverse involvement in the design processes. Swedish official design policy stresses everyone’s influence on the common environment (Ministry of Culture 2018). There are legal requirements for municipalities to publicize detailed plans and arrange consultations about proposals (Larsson 2010). Further, municipalities and regions are urged by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions to arrange dialogues with citizens to strengthen democracy through trust-building and learning. Municipal staff (officials) are the responsible hosts of urban design processes although the practical work – like workshops with citizens – is performed by subcontractors, steered by procurement requirements. According to Hellquist and Westin (2019), consensus is the principal goal of dialogues. Conflicts shall be articulated and handled politically (peacefully) by assured representatives for opposing perspectives. Among Swedish municipalities, they found no mobilizing and strengthening specific groups–e.g., to equalize power.

UNCRPD Article 4:3 urges municipalities to actively involve persons with disabilities, through their representative organizations, in decisions concerning issues that affect them. Stemming from a reform in the 1970s, some municipalities established advisory groups or councils, sometimes called disability councils. They have traditionally been a platform for participation in urban design but Nilsson (2013) qualifies disability councils as Placation in Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation. Disability organizations that are part of established Swedish civil society are invited. They consist of associations whose members have specific impairments (Hugemark and Roman 2007). In some places, local associations form umbrella associations and receive funding from the municipal government to rent an office and employ someone, but not necessarily a person with an impairment.

Research about participation

The practice of consulting citizens is stressed in consumer-oriented and user-centred design in the US, as well as the European practice of orientation towards participation and democracy (Sanders and Stappers 2008). Years ago, Pateman (1970) argued for supporting groups with low socio-economic status to develop participatory opportunities within planning and design.

However, studies of participation reveal many disillusions. Observers such as Hurlbert and Gupta (2015) regard participation as highly romanticized. Tewdwr-Jones and Wilson (2022, 229) observe that ‘shared and co‐designed arrangements in any major urban area [are] often a significant challenge’. According to Garde (2014, 89) citizen participation often only ‘contributes commonplace ideas and is inadequate for achieving excellence in urban design projects’.

Calderon (2020) found unsolvable conflicts in a suburban project where the normative and idealistic approach of the planners clashed with unaddressed local problems. Leddy-Owen, Robazza, and Scherer (2018) saw participating youth challenging adult authority by jeering and taking control of conversations, concluding that there were irreconcilable conflicts of interests. In a workshop about new streets, politicians ignored the proposals of the participants (Westerlund 2016). Many authors refer to participation as a gesture of goodwill or an embellishment (Huxham 2013; Jones, Petrescu, and Till 2005; Larsson 2010; Seve, Redondo, and Sega 2022). Such symbolic use of participation might enforce and even strengthen pre-established power relations (Cooke and Kothari 2001).

Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers (2015) found no evidence of material benefits from so-called co-creation, defined as the ‘active involvement of end-users’, but instead saw corporations involving customers in the hope of gaining loyalty, satisfaction, and efficiency (1335). However, Larsson (2010) argues that participation facilitates these processes and reduces the risk of contested or disregarded outcomes. For example, people feel more connected to the final design if they have been part of the process (Cox et al. 2014; Sanoff 2000). Being involved yields ‘a sense of ownership’ (Carmona et al. 2010, 363).

Westerlund (2009, 73), argues that creative design processes are best served by a diverse group of ‘direct participants’ with personal experiences, rather than the conformist standpoints of organization representatives. However, Yelavich and Adams (2014) suggest participation to be oriented towards communities more than towards individuals.

Ladder(s) of participation

Despite its age, Arnstein’s (1969) ‘ladder of participation’ is commonly referred to in Swedish municipal practice, e.g., the Participation Staircase by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (2023). Thus, it will be used here for modelling participation styles. Arnstein’s ladder has eight rungs representing ascending degrees of citizen participation. From above the six highest are: Citizen control, Delegated power, Partnership, Consultation, Placation, and Informing.

In general, she found that participants were ‘planned for’. Decisions were taken and approved by staff. Participants are unaware ‘peripheral watchdogs’ used to ‘rubber stamp’ the proposals of the professionals (30). Arnstein (1969, 24) wanted a power shift from authorities to citizens, otherwise, the processes would become ‘empty and frustrating’ with participants in a paternalistic ‘advisory role’ (29). Consultation is viewed as begging for opinions, since inputs are controlled by powerholders without any ‘assurance that citizen concerns and ideas will be taken into account’ (28). Partnership, represented ‘bargaining influence over the outcome’ requiring ‘negotiation between citizens and powerholders’ (31). After agreeing on how to collaborate, institutional representatives engage in a give-and-take process. While Consultation is classified as Tokenism, Partnership falls within Citizen power, resembling Deshler, and Sock’s distinction (quoted by Sanoff 2000) between pseudo-participation and genuine participation.

Widely used metaphors of ladders and stairs suggest a hierarchy of categories. Collins and Ison (2009) regard this as a constraint on thought. Rather, processes should be guided by social learning, with neither party controlling the other. Carmona et al. (2010, 334) oppose Arnstein’s binary view of powerholders and the powerless and argues that ‘all actors have some power’. Carmona et al.’s binary classification identifies top-down and bottom-up participation. The first is cost-effective but manipulative while the latter often fails due to a lack of time, commitment, skills, and resources. To combat this, Eronen and Wikberg Nilsson (2022) developed a tool for capturing people’s dreams – the Dreamcatcher – given that urban designers are more interested in material factors than social ones.

While designing the city with people – providing something for everybody – instead of for people, is widely discussed, disabled people are seldom mentioned in the literature about participation. Hästbacka, Nygård, and Nyqvist (2016) found that disabled people mainly participated in issues regarding labour and leisure activities. Nevertheless, in addition to judicial reasons for participation by disabled people, there are those such as relevance, accuracy, use, and social justice also important reasons for participation (Jacobson, Azzam, and Baez 2013). The product designer, Westerlund (2009, 11) found that participants with bodies outside the norm brought ‘crucial experience that we designers lacked’. For example, Heylighen and Herssens (2014) found that blind people notice variables that visually biased design professionals miss. Yet, participation by disabled people is often ‘an afterthought rather than as an integral element’ (Imrie and Hall 2001, 345).

The present study offers a closely observed, local perspective on the Swedish disability movement in the context of urban design, and relevant research on inclusive design processes.

Methodology

Three different urban design processes, taking place in three medium-sized Swedish municipalities (X, Y, and Z), were examined through participant observation as well as the study of documents and artefacts. Data is collected from the three different sites but examined together as one multi-local setting. The choice to select three urban design processes in three different cities offers a diverse picture of citizen participation at the local level in Sweden. It is not a comparison of cases but a view of mechanisms within one Swedish case.

The processes were aimed at revitalizing public places and buildings and were selected for being guided by universal design. They concerned the following sites:

• Mun.X: Re-design of a central square in a city of approximately 200,000 inhabitants.

• Mun.Y: Furnishings for a new public library in a suburb, in connection with revitalizing an outside square in a city of approximately 100,000 inhabitants.

• Mun.Z: Re-design of a central street in the historical part of a city of approximately 50,000 inhabitants.

Figure 1 shows photos from the sites.

Figure 1. Photos from the sites, left to right: the library building, a go-along interview, workers at the street, the square under construction, a cycle road with a tactile line, a tactile line covered by ice, the redesigned street.

Spending time (some days) in the cities, visiting a municipal political assembly and attending a sales meeting for outdoor furniture (mun.Z), yielded insight into local conditions. Due to the pandemic, most council meetings, one network meeting among officials (mun.Z), and four meetings on procurement requirements for library furniture were observed online (mun.Y). The disability councils in the three cities were visited online. Getting access to the sites took some months, and as pointed out by Hammersley and Atkinson (2007) needed to be constantly negotiated and renegotiated.

Key persons, sometimes selected after observations, were asked to engage in go-along interviews during their ordinary walks, lasting half an hour, to capture attitudes and experiences related to places and artefacts (Kusenbach 2003). Between November 2021 and March 2022 such six go-along interviews were performed in the city centres, followed by one-hour seated interviews in offices and cafés. Eight persons participated: four municipal employees (one recently retired) and four people from disability organizations (one a Board member). Questions were prepared ahead of time, but were open to reformulation depending on the interviewee’s commitment and the explorative modus of the interview (Roulston 2019). They covered roles, representation, goals, dilemmas, opportunities, influence, responsibilities, and power relations. A balance of gender (three men and five women) and diversity of roles were sought. Table 1 presents an overview of the research activities.

Table 1. Research activities: go-along and seated interviews with municipal officials and persons from local disability organizations, and observations of municipal meetings.

Activities		Square	Street	Library and surroundings
Go-along + seated interview
Municipal officials	Architects	1	1
	Strategists		1*	1
Disability organizations	Employees	1		2**
	Board member	1
Observations
Municipal meetings	Council meeting	1	1	1
	Officials’ accessibility network		1
	Procurement meetings			4
	Sales meeting		1
	Political assembly (debate)		1

Note: * 1 recently retired.

**1 in seated interview only.

The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The aggregated transcriptions and edited field notes were coded, categorized, and sorted under themes, employing qualitative content analysis inspired by Graneheim and Lundman (2004), and using NVivo software. The quotations come from the sitting interviews.

Findings

The findings are based on transcriptions of go-along and sitting interviews with 8 persons, edited field notes from participant observation at (mostly virtual) meetings at disability councils, and internal municipal meetings regarding procurement requirements, purchasing, and planning. These sources were supplemented by municipal documents, such as workshop reports and procurement files. All municipalities had disability councils but only mun.X and mun.Y had disability umbrella organizations with employees who attended daytime meetings at the municipality. In mun.Z, given the absence of an umbrella organization, the observed council meeting had a informing character.

In the process of re-designing a square in mun.X, the participants were selected by the disability organizations, and were in line with the procurement document called ‘accessibility experts’. In the process of furnishing a new library in mun.Y, the disability organizations were not formally involved but joined committed library staff and managed to have some input, though late in the process. The processes were governed by universal design through procurement requirements (mun.X), advocacy by committed staff and local disability organizations (mun.Y), and overarching directive (mun.Z). In addition, the processes had unofficial goals such as reducing driving speeds.

Participations styles

The content analysis yielded a complex picture of the styles of participation within the three processes. Comparing the findings with Arnstein’s ladder yields evidence of Informing, Placation, and Delegated power. Arnstein’s observations regarding participants’ illusions about opportunities for influence, their lack of awareness, and their suspicion are clearly illustrated within the studied design processes. Yet, it is difficult to apply the upper rungs of self-governing communities in Sweden. A glimpse of co-creational collaboration was observed among municipal staff in the library furniture procurement process, where they shared doubts and wishes, and learned about the process in internal meetings.

Among Arnstein’s rungs, Consultation and Partnership were the most salient. Based on the views and visions in the findings, Table 2 elaborates on oppositional models to illuminate the encountered variation. This endeavour helped identify polarized participation styles with Consultation being temporary – sometimes only one workshop – dynamic, risk-taking, and aimed at retrieving personal information. The process is guided by compliance with regulations. Partnership can be seen as a formal, stable, and long-term collaboration between representatives around the negotiation table. While Consultation implies unequal and occasional participation of individuals, Partnership implies equal, long-term collaborative negotiation between representatives.

Table 2. Consultation and partnership as oppositional participation styles based on the findings.

Consultation	Style	Partnership
Facilitate the process	Objective	Influencing outcome
Prevent protests	Goal	Compromise
Retrieving	Main aim	Negotiating
Occasional	Time span	Long-term
Early meeting	Timing	The whole process
Singular	Feedback need	Constant
Solution-seeking	Behaviour	Manifesting
Personal	Participant role	Representative
Passive	Participative mode	Active
Unequal	Basic relation	Equal
One-way	Information	Mutual
Listening	Attitude	Intervening
Frame	View on regulations	Demand
Compliance	Driver	Change
Static	Knowledge	Evolving
Consensus	Intention	Critique
Dynamic and risk-taking	Character	Formal and stable
Uncertainty	Concern	Mistrust

Consultation

Consultation was the main orientation of the interviewed project leaders in mun.X and mun.Z. They were municipally employed landscape architects, defining their job as interpreting political decisions, balancing the interests of stakeholders, and adapting the design to contextual factors, e.g., spaces and height levels. They described their close collaboration with stakeholders such as municipal companies, property owners and traders. ‘Dialogues’ were held with elderly persons, young people, etc., for confirmation of proposals, facilitation of the process, and preventing protests.

Regarding disability, the project leader in mun.X talked vaguely about recruiting a ‘broader group’ than they usually do. She wanted to capture a wide range of individual disability experiences. At the workshops, conducted with an external consultant (here considered part of the municipality, since they are governed by their procurement requirements), individual opinions were expressed by participants with similar impairments. However, despite the broadening ambitions the participants were chairpersons of local disability associations, one in a representative role. When different opinions were expressed by participants with different impairments, these were referred to by the project leader as ‘opposing interests’, framed by a supervising attitude of conflict resolution:

We got an understanding between these groups … There was a good conversational tone between them. We almost didn’t have to go in. They figured out for themselves what was best for both groups, as a little compromise. (project leader in mun.X)

According to written reports from this workshop, participants emphasized safety and stability over flexible use.

The project leaders valued the personal disability experience as ‘expertise’ but regarded ‘letting people talk’ (project leader in mun.Z) as a means of facilitating and stabilizing the process and preventing protests. Meetings give, according to this project leader, people a chance to ‘blow off steam’.

Partnership

The disability organization employees saw themselves as partners with the municipality, with the right to negotiate outcomes. However, this expectation did not correspond with their experience, where the municipality collected opinions at initial meetings and then presented decisions without any opportunity to influence them. Their involvement was regarded as too late, voiced after procurement requirements were set. Officials were seen as doing only what they must, not their best. There were no opportunities for genuine discussion of proposals and issues. What they wanted was:

on all levels, all the time, to get feedback along the way and be able to shout and say … here you have either misinterpreted us or not understood – or we have not been clear about what we mean. (disability organization employee in mun.X)

When the final proposal for the square in mun.X reached the disability organizations’ office, they did not recognize the workshop discussions. The proposal had already been submitted and they saw no sense in further action.

With whom should you have dialogue? … if we come up with new things that we want to change, it would become very messy for the municipality. Should they hire the consultant once again and prolong the contract – or what should they do? (disability organization employee in mun.X)

In mun.Y, collaboration was tighter. For example, disability organizations educated officials about accessibility. However, tensions and misunderstandings occurred. Issues raised at a meeting with the municipality included the lack of space for a wheelchair in the evacuation zone. The organizations raised concerns regarding orientation to and from the library but felt that such universal arguments were ignored and that they were expected only to talk about disability as a minority interest.

Different expectations generate uncertainty and mistrust

Different expectations concerning participation revealed out tensions between Consultation (facilitation and one-way information) and Partnership (aspirations to influence the outcome). Uncertainty and mistrust were caused by failure to understand the other party’s perspective, confusion about roles and loyalties, and frustration at the lack of clear opportunities for influence. Figure 2 illustrates the asymmetrical relation between municipal governments and disability organizations and the different participation styles they are oriented towards in their collaboration.

Figure 2. Illustration of the asymmetrical relation between municipal governments and disability organizations and the participation styles they are oriented towards in collaboration.

The project leaders assumed participants to lack knowledge about building processes and their ‘governing conditions’, like security rules and ownership aspects. Participants were unaware that original plans must be adjusted and that requests cannot always be fulfilled. The project leaders were keen to comply with accessibility regulations and found it frustrating to be criticized for neglecting them or to encounter oversimplified views and a fixation with specific requirements. One of them talked about becoming more tough-skinned about complaints. It was hard to know when to stop listening.

The project leaders in mun.X thought all suggestions by the participants were reflected in the subsequent proposal, for instance, that a specific stone edge was equivalent to a tactile line. However, after complaints, outside the participatory workshops, about the lack of a tactile line, she added one ‘to make everyone recognize themselves in the process’. But, as she continued ‘it’s so easy to say, “you have no tactile line here” and then you add one, but somewhere you must stop’.

The project leader in mun.Z rather regarded dialogue meetings as not ‘troublesome at all’. He had a concern about getting his proposals ‘confirmed’ and only got a few courteously approving comments. He wished to understand how the street is experienced by visually impaired people, but the participant who was asked about this simply stated that changes are always negative, problems are inevitable and balancing the needs of the municipality is tricky.

The project leaders expressed uncertainty about the status and structure of the disability organizations and did not know how much or when to consult them, or how much weight to give the statements of different participants. What was their preunderstanding, and did they speak as individuals or as organizational representatives – or both? Misunderstandings arose from the discrepancy between the organizations’ wish for partnership and their actual resources. For instance, at one council meeting in mun.Y, the disability organizations were offered participation at all final inspections of building projects but declined due to lack of resources.

Participation styles were intertwined

The actual processes contained a mix of participation styles. Consultation and Partnership co-existed within the same process. Beyond the tendencies of municipal officials to lean towards Consultation and disability stakeholders towards Partnership, there was a surprising complexity of views and experiences. Municipal officials, especially those called strategists, identified with the civil society and were oriented towards collaboration between the municipality and disability organizations, such as administrative entities serving as recruitment channels on behalf of the municipalities.

On the other hand, the disability organizations employees expressed sympathy with the municipal side, regarding the municipality as an equal part and oneself as a professional. When a Board member in mun.X talked about some meetings as ‘absurd’ and officials as incompetent, her employee said he understands why officials are not keen to attend consultation meetings as ‘they know they are going to make fools of themselves and that they will hear it’.

Hence, there were subdivisions of approaches within the disability organizations. While persons with impairments were consulted to bring in disability experience, the disability organizations acted as the municipalities’ partners in arranging workshops. In the case of the city square in mun.X, the employee of the disability organization was not consulted as an expert since he had no personal impairment. Conversely, in mun.Y, the employees of the disability organization had impairments and acted as both organizing partners and consulted participants.

The application of universal design was revealed to be merely a disability perspective without integration, interpreted in a regulatory way. However, the official communications emphasized compliance with accessibility regulations and the workshops focused on physical details like paving and kerbs, related to the participants’ impairments. The focus was on how to cross the square without meeting obstacles such as unpredictably placed mobile furniture. This stands in contrast with the political goals for the square: a safe and flexible meeting place with a mix of people around the clock. A narrow disability perspective related to accessibility regulation reigned despite the initial ambitions of applying universal design. Ambitions to involve a diverse population were lost among demands for compliance with accessibility regulations related to specific impairments.

Discussion

Addressing diverse human needs for a flexible urban design is challenging. It is complicated to assess users’ needs and contexts vary due to local policy and collaborative conditions. Eronen and Wikberg Nilsson (2022) note that participation and inclusion are crucial for achieving sustainable societies but it is complicated since it is hard to know ‘for whom’. They think obliviousness is more common than discrimination.

The experiences of disabled participants in this study, indicate similarities between marginalized groups, who share a feeling that ‘this world was not built for us’ (Costanza-Chock 2020, 45). There was a tendency to separate groups along impairments but no causal relationship between impairments and urban experiences. This resembles the informants of Bonehill, von Benzon, and Shaw (2020, 356) who were unable to navigate their environment not because of their impairment, but due to ‘design failures, social stigmatization, and careless behaviour of others’. Disabled people are excluded both physically and socially (Kitchin 1998).

The participants in mun.X resemble how poor people in the study of Leddy-Owen, Robazza, and Scherer (2018) felt out of place if they moved beyond self-imposed boundaries. However, the mistrust found in the present study did not match the feelings of estrangement of the suburban participants in Calderon (2020). Additionally, the professionals fear losing status and control was not in the present study, as Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers (2015) found.

The Swedish disability organizations were found to be ‘traditional community organizations’ and the processes are ‘organized participatory planning’ if placed in the taxonomy of co-creation suggested by Seve, Redondo, and Sega (2022). The equal opportunity to influence the design process, depicted by Cox et al. (2014), or the institutional space where citizens are invited as equals (Voorberg, Bekkers, and Tummers 2015), seemed far away.

The organizations did not carry out self-build experiments and spontaneously reclaim public space – what Lydon and Garcia (2015) call tactical urbanism. Neither were they managers of public space in an inventive and creative process of ‘commoning’ (Stavrides 2016). Rather, the disability organizations relied on municipal oversight of accessibility regulation. Instead of demanding an active role and tasks, they concentrated on urging the authorities to fulfil their legal responsibility.

Hence, the appointment of participants as ‘experts’ is ambivalent. It may indicate Citizen power in line with Trischler, Dietrich, and Rundle-Thiele (2019, 1611) who suggest project leaders should ‘de-centre themselves as the main agents or experts, instead focus on enabling the participants to independently collaborate on ideas addressing their specific needs’. However, from the disability organizations’ point of view, asking external accessibility consultants or certified experts for review or clearance, may mean the municipalities’ abdicating their responsibility as an authority.

The ’expertise’ of participants should therefore be distinguished from both knowledge about accessibility regulation and personal experience as ‘direct participants’ in Westerlund’s (2009) sense. For participants in a design process, openness and creativity are more important than accessibility expertise.

Regarding themselves, as representatives for organizations or specific impairments is another issue elucidated. According to Huxham (2013), participants seldom reflect on whether, what, and how they are representative. Roles were given and taken in a mutual interplay. The views of participants seem to be regarded as static, not as dynamic user experiences. As all humans, the participants incubate a variety of life experiences besides disability. Many of those engaged in the disability organizations were former politicians or officials and found it strange to be in the role of participants and be asked about personal experiences. Unrealistic expectations hide according to Jacobson, Azzam, and Baez (2013) a risk of participation losing its value. Expecting Partnership and instead being offered Consultation could lead to a sense of inferiority, humiliation, and disillusion.

Consultation implies immediate trust between the roles of questioner and responder, while Partnership is based on a legitimate mistrust between equal and negotiating parties. It requires that the parties can sustain their representatives both ideologically and financially. When this was not possible due to lack of resources, alternative stances such as humbleness and resignation might be adopted, as in the street process in mun.Z. However, there seemed to have been no communication about how and when to influence, or where, when, and with whom decisions are taken. The disability stakeholders thought they had more power than they had.

Consequences of organizational asymmetry

Concepts like participation, involvement, and inclusion indicate a process in which one party invites and another is invited. There is a risk of seeking public support and acquiescence for already prepared proposals (Carmona et al. 2010). Further asymmetries between a tax-financed public authority and civil society entities create a risk of either overestimating or underestimating the other party. Municipal compliance with and control of accessibility regulation depends on local resources and capacity. The observed tensions can also be understood as signs of failure to communicate one’s standpoint.

There were practical issues, such as that of the timing of meetings. While the officials wanted meetings to be held during working hours this meant that participants tended to be drawn from the retired or unemployed or being represented by the employee. Misunderstandings arose since the limited resources of the disability organizations were not known or revealed by the organizations. They might protect their privileged status as a recruitment channel and regard themselves as representatives, although most persons with impairments are not active in disability organizations (Shakespeare 2013).

That municipalities and disability organizations should play different roles was expected. More surprising were the intertwined relations and mixed approaches that the model of participation styles revealed. Under the ideal-typical participation styles of Consultation and Partnership, various overlapping agencies and movements could be seen. While the disability organizations talked about being oppositional, they behaved as a part of the municipality, or as part of the same interwoven structure. These strong tensions can be interpreted as a strong system, resilient to stress and abrasions. Further, the disability organizations were internally torn between the universal design approach – advocating a diverse population – and one of compartmentalized interests. Such tensions are due to external expectations but may stem from contradictory claims for equal acceptance in society and requests for special support (Sépulchre 2018).

Further, there are tasks where a polarization between the duty-bound authority and the rights-holding citizen is acceptable, for instance when monitoring the UNCRPD. In other cases, such polarization might obscure opportunities for co-creation among citizens, including officials.

The Swedish consensus culture carries with it both the risk of ostensible participation without influence and the possibility of sharing experiences and knowledge. Linking the frequent use of ‘dialogue’ in Swedish discourse to Arnstein’s (1969) overarching aim of ‘enlightened dialogue’ may suggest encounters in line with Bohm (2013), who regards dialogue as sharing. Contrary to negotiation, dialogue is an open-ended bouncing of experiences with designers refining the visions of participants (Cox et al. 2014). Carmona et al. (2010) suggest early dialogue, enabling the public to react to different design options and scenarios but also to understand the complexity of design processes. He also notes that paying clients have more power than non-paying participants.

Citizen participation is not always possible due to lack of participants and time, or insufficient prestige associated with the project. Arnstein’s line between Tokenism (where Consultation bides) and Citizen power (including Partnership) is hard to defend. Consultation and even Informing will sometimes have to be sufficient. However, Arnstein (1969, 28) made some procedural statements. For example, Informing citizens ‘can be a legitimate step toward their full participation’. Thus, the focus on physical details and measurements might in this sense be a step towards intersectional processes, integrating disability with age, ethnicity, class background, education, or professional experience.

Conclusions

This paper yields an in-depth picture of local processes where disability organizations collaborated with the municipalities to include disability experience in the processes of revitalizing public places and buildings. This collaboration was formal, established, and regulated by agreements – sometimes resembling a friendly tug-of-war. The corresponding rungs at Arnstein’s ladder were Consultation and Partnership. These were elaborated into oppositional participation styles corresponding to the findings.

This model helped to detect tension between different expectations. The municipal project leaders were oriented towards Consultation since they wanted to consult participants to facilitate the process by moving forward by getting ready-made proposals confirmed. Employees of disability organizations collaborated with officials as partners in the administration of and recruitment for workshops and wanted ongoing feedback to influence the result. These different expectations on the aim of participation entailed misunderstandings. So did unclear roles regarding representativity and the asymmetry of resources and interests. Failure to communicate opportunities for influence and the limited roles given to participants generated feelings of uncertainty and mistrust, sometimes resulting in passive resignation.

While Arnstein primarily looked at the approach of the ‘inviting’ party, this paper identifies a variety of participation styles within the same processes. The studied processes contained a mix of approaches and displayed internal tensions. Officials experienced ambiguity about the legitimacy of participants and participants about the conditions for influencing the process. These findings suggest that the aim and role of participation would gain from being clarified and topics such as previous experiences, policy (e.g., the UNCRPD), constraints and limiting conditions, as well as opportunities for influence should be articulated and discussed. Thus, co-creative dialogues might be developed.

A limitation of the present study is that most interviewees were employees. There is a need for further exploration of the identified tensions between different professional groups and between disability organization employees and lay participants.

Ethical declaration

According to formal advice from the Swedish Ethical Review Authority, ethical approval was not required for this study.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all participants who took time for go-along interviews, to those accepting a researcher observing their meetings, and to the municipalities who opened their doors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by VINNOVA, Sweden´s Innovation Agency [grant number 2021-02810].