Participatory planning

Participatory planning is an urban planning paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the strategic and management processes of urban planning; or, community-level planning processes, urban or rural. It is often considered as part of community development.

Origins

In the UN Habitat document Building Bridges Through Participatory Planning, Fred Fisher, president of the International Development Institute for Organization and Management, identifies Participatory Reflection And Action (PRA) as the leading school of participatory planning. He identifies Paulo Freire and Kurt Lewin as key pioneers, as well as claiming planning fathers Patrick Geddes and Lewis Mumford as participatory planners. Freire’s belief that poor and exploited people can, and should be, enabled to analyze their own reality was a fundamental inspiration for the participatory planning movement. Lewin’s relevance lay in his integration of democratic leadership, group dynamics, experiential learning, action research, and open systems theory, and his efforts to overcome racial and ethnic injustices.

In general, PRA has been supplanted by Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), which emphasizes the links between the participatory process and action. Related work has been done on community-based participatory research (CBPR).

Principles

Robert Chambers, whom Fisher considered a leading icon of the movement, defines PRA according to the following principles;

Handing over the stick (or pen or chalk)

Facilitating investigation, analysis, presentation and learning by local people themselves, so they generate and own the outcomes and also learn.

Self-critical awareness

Facilitators continuously and critically examine their own behavior.

Personal responsibility

Taking responsibility for what is done, rather than, for instance, relying on the authority of manuals or on rigid rules.

Sharing

Involves the wide range of techniques now available, from chatting across the fence to photocopies and e-mail.

Methods

PRA and PLA methods and approaches include:

• Do-it-yourself: local people as experts and teachers, and outsiders as novices
• Local analysis of secondary sources
• Mapping and modeling
• Time lines and trend and change analysis
• Seasonal calendars
• Daily time-use analysis
• Institutional diagramming
• Matrix scoring and ranking
• Shared presentations and analysis, and
• Participatory planning, budgeting, implementation and monitoring.

Examples

The community-driven development approach advocated by the World Bank is an example of participatory planning.

A number of examples link participatory community plans with local government planning. One widely=applied example is South Africa's national policy of community-based planning methodology, and an adapted version, the Harmonised Participatory Planning Guide for Lower Level Local Governments, which is national policy in Uganda. Community-Based Planning has been applied across the whole of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality in South Africa, including the City of Durban, and is being rolled out in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality. Community-Based Planning is an example of the practical application of the sustainable living.

Challenges

Ensuring that all sections of the community are able to participate is a challenge for participatory planning. Some approaches, such as Community-Based Planning, separate the community so that the livelihoods and preferred outcomes of different social groups can be identified.

Many experiences with Participatory Reflection and Action and participatory planning suffer from a lack of follow-up. PRA has often not been part of a system, but an ad-hoc process. Community-Based Planning has tried to overcome this by linking planning to the mainstream local government planning system.

Another challenge is caused by a lack of funds to actually implement the plans, which can lead to participation fatigue and frustration among communities. In the social-investment funds supported by the World Bank, participatory planning is often the first step, often leading to planning of infrastructure. In some cases, such as Community-Based Planning in South Africa, amounts of around US$3,500 to $6,800 are provided to each ward to implement activities arising from the ward plan. This then stimulates more widespread community action.

See also

• Participatory budgeting
• Participatory economics
• Participatory justice
• Public participation

Bibliography

• Goldman, Ian and Abbott, Joanne, eds. (April 2004) "Decentralisation and community-based planning." Participatory Learning and Action Notes 49. International Institute for Environment and Development:London.

External links

• The World Bank Participation Sourcebook: Participatory Planning
• Communities and Local Government UK: Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International experience in mediation, negotiation and engagement in making plans