Public Participation in Planning—A Multidimensional Model: The Case of Israel

Abstract

Discussion of public participation has lacked a comprehensive framework. This paper presents a multidimensional model of public participation with an institutional perspective, designed to facilitate case analysis and enable systematic comparison. The model has three main dimensions: structure, process and actions. Participation structures and processes include organisation, representation, consultation and legal-administrative channels; actions include information exchange and alternative planning. A pilot application of this model framed a case study of public participation in Israel, where objections and appeals are the main channel for public involvement, giving participation an adversarial connotation. Based on the case study, proposals are made for changes to Israeli legislation, practices, and public awareness. The conclusion discusses the model's methodological, policy and practice implications.

Keywords:

• Public participation
• planning process
• planning models
• Israel

Notes

 1. Previous analyses have either focused on one form of public participation, e.g. collaborative planning (Innes & Booher, 1999) or information exchange (Brody, Godschalk & Burby, 2003), or used partial/incomplete models, e.g. Alfasi's (2003) account of the Israeli experience.

 2. The model was developed to provide the conceptual framework for the case study, which is a review and analysis of public participation in the Israeli planning system, focusing on participation related planning rights. This case study is one chapter in a larger report on planning rights in Israel (Bimkom, 2005, 2007). Part I of the report presents the inventory and status of planning rights based on legal research, and evaluates their implementation based on anecdotal evidence and secondary sources (for Israel) supplemented by an informal comparison with three other planning systems (Alexander, 2007, pp. 3-19). Part II of the report evaluates the implementation of selected planning rights based on original field research. The report was prepared by Bimkom—Planners for Planning Rights, an Israeli human rights/advocacy planning association. The author was responsible for Part I with legal research assistance from Advocate Mona Yazbek.

 3. This approach informs most of the research on public participation in planning, which still includes valuable work, e.g. Churchman & Sadan (2004).

 4. For more on the meaning of civil society, see Hall (1995).

 5. While often more limited in terms of breadth of participation, it is much more effective in influencing decisions and changing outcomes.

 6. This term is not used here with evaluative connotations (like “effective”) but is intended to mean conformity to accepted procedural norms of organisational behaviour; other languages (e.g. Dutch, German and Hebrew) have a more precise and commonly used word for this. Here it refers to planning systems that are basically reasonable, respect the rule of law, and meet threshold standards of due process and sound administration.

 7. Institutionalisation here is meant in its broadest sense (Alexander, 2005, pp. 210-213) and planning systems are not limited to governmental institutions and agencies. Rather, planning is viewed as a form of governance (Healey, 1998, pp. 218-220), involving all sectors of society.

 8. However, this form of participation is rare in statutory planning systems; more frequent is public representation.

 9. The Israeli Project Renewal neighbourhood agencies imitated the US Model Cities agencies in their structural participation, with neighbourhood resident representatives projected to make up a majority of the governing board, but they never reached that stage of development.

10. Rijksplanologiese Commissie: a national body which, though advisory, carries considerable weight; its members are all “public” representatives: individual experts, members of professional associations and academics.

11. A majority of “tenant” firms' representatives makes up their membership.

12. This holds true for most of the documented cases, for example the California Growth Management Consensus Project and its follow-on Economic and Environmental Recovery Commission and California Governance Consensus Project—initiated by the State Legislature, the San Francisco Estuary Project and the Santa Monica bay Restoration Project—under EPA's National Estuary Program, the San Francisco Bay Area Partnership—initiated by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission with federal ISTEA funding (Innes et al., 1994; Innes & Booher, 1999), US watershed management projects including the bi-state Lake Tahoe plan produced under federal or state EPA mandates, Australian state initiated catchment area management plans, South East Queensland sub-regional growth management projects, implemented under Queensland state's SEQ2001 planning process (Margerum, 2002a, b), and water management in Florida under state mandate (Scholtz & Stiftel, 2005).

13. Here representation means membership of a body short of a majority; if public representatives are a majority we have a different form of participation, covered above.

14. In many countries (Israel, the UK, and the USA among others) this is not limited to planning, but extends to all aspects of state administration and government, and is enforced through “freedom of information” laws.

15. Often this is a “counter-plan” embodying objections to the “establishment” plan (developed by the planning authority or submitted by landholders/property owners and developers) and presenting alternative development options for consideration in the planning authority's deliberations.

16. The right to alternative planning is implied when a party who is not a planning authority or government agency, nor the landowner of the relevant parcels, has legal standing to submit a plan for the area for approval by the appropriate planning authority. The assignment of legal standing varies widely between different countries' planning systems, from some (such as the USA) where it is universal, to others (such as the UK) where it is almost non-existent.

17. This section is based on Bimkom (2007) Chapter 5, The Right to Participation in Planning, condensed in Bimkom (2005, pp. 29-31).

18. Planning rights are institutional rights, i.e. justifiable claims of “consumers” in an institution—here a planning system—against producers—the state and its agents including planners (cf. patients' rights in health care systems); positive planning rights are ones with tested justification (e.g. in laws, regulations, statutory plans, contracts, etc.) making them enforceable. For more on planning rights see Alexander (2002a).

19. The exceptions are hypothetical: the law annexing the Golan Heights to Israel made the return of the area subject to approval by referendum, and recently a law was proposed (but rejected by the Knesset) to hold a referendum on the proposed disengagement from Gaza.

20. Therefore collaborative planning is here subsumed under goal-setting and programming.

21. Quasi-NGOs: organisations that are not formally state agencies, but linked to government in ways that limit their independence and sometimes with delegated state authority.

22. Formally, the ILA is a state agency, as it is supervised by a government minister and funded through the budget (apart from its independent revenues), but its governance that includes non-state bodies makes it more like a quango.

23. In this context, this does not necessarily mean the (party or ideological) political opposition. Rather, opposition is pragmatically identified with interests opposing the establishment. So in Israel's planning system, “green” organisations are seen (to varying degrees) as such an opposition—in part because they argue against the development interests espoused by many in the planning establishment.

24. These organisations are identified in a periodically updated list compiled by the Ministry of the Interior: http://www.moi.gov.il

25. The Arab Center for Alternative Planning, and Bimkom—Planners for Planning Rights.

26. “Pillarisation”—in Dutch: verzuiling—refers to the institutionalisation at the communal level of four distinct “pillars” of society. These “pillars”—Protestant, Catholic, Socialist and Liberal—were originally (in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries) manifested in separate parties, schools, newspapers and associated economic and financial organisations (Lijphart, 1968).

27. This difference is manifest in the number of public interest based objections lodged by Dutch NGOs to controversial plans, e.g. Schiphol airport's expansion plan (Alexander, 1998, p. 314).

28. Except organisations identified under Clause 100(3) see Civil Society above.

29. As an administrative appeals court, sitting as the High Court of Justice.

30. Subject to certain qualifications itemised in the law; however, the courts have given these a very narrow interpretation, and have usually given precedence to the public right to know; see Bimkom (2005, pp. 34-35) and Bimkom (2007) Chapter 7, Freedom of Information: The Right to Receive Information.

31. A systematic analysis of the implementation in Israel of the right to be informed reveals some of these: contractors', developers' and local authorities' lack of incentive (even counter-incentive) to effectively fulfill their notification obligations such as posting and personal service, failure of specified media (newspapers, the official bulletin) to reach their intended audiences, and illegibility of the legal notice's format for any but specialist experts (Bimkom, 2007, Chapter 6, Freedom of Information: The Right to Notice).

32. Because this was not a court verdict, but a court endorsed agreement-in-law between the disputing parties (Bimkom, 2005, p. 30, note 35).

33. Shmueli (2005, pp. 4-5) comes to the same conclusion; consequently her analysis of public participation in Israeli planning focuses on cases of non-mandatory participation—outside or supplementary to the statutory planning system.

34. Avoidance of statutory public participation requirements has taken various forms. One is local government's substitution of non-statutory plans—e.g. master plans, development policy documents—for statutory plans; another is structural efforts to bypass the statutory planning system altogether, such as establishment of the special Project Approval Committees in the early 1990s (Alterman, 1995, pp. 164, 168) and the National Infrastructures Committee today (Han, 2004).