Public participation, or rather community engagement in planning of urban development and regeneration has been a prime professional interest of mine. Planning literature shows that ‘public participation’ is included in planning laws in many countries (International Manual of Planning Practice, Judith Ryser and Terea Franchini, Isocarp 2015),  but genuine ‘implementation’ rarely seems to take place. Public participation – also named ‘public consultation’ – is at best a late stage ‘add-on’, often a ‘one-off’ during the planning process to satisfy planning application conditions. Considering that most planning applies to existing urban fabrics or environments which are not without people it means that the built environment earmarked for transformation is used by inhabitants, workers, people pursuing leisure activities and others.

Cites are about people, not only about their material reality which is in permanent transition due to its users, quite independently of plans and planned interventions. There is also the issue of divided competence between planning and ‘implementation’, the realisations of (statutory) plans. Planners make plans guided by the elected representatives who have decision making powers over these plans. However, in general, implementation or the realisation of such proposed physical changes are undertaken by the development industry which has different objectives. This often leads to lengthy negotiations. Communities of these urban environments selected for physical transformation are rarely involved in this process and their views, wishes and wants tend not to be taken into account.

This top down hierarchic, linear and bureaucratic mode of planning and implementation has been challenged over the years. Some planners and especially planning students reflected on the rights and responsibilities of planners and their role in the urban development process. Some engaged with communities and developed the notion of ‘co-production’, reflected in what had become ‘participatory planning’. Academe took these concepts up in its research and teaching. A seminal moment was Sherry R Arnstein’s ‘”A Ladder of Citizen Participation” (AIP Journal July 1969 pp216-224). Another academic debate about public participation divided between the aim of consensus building and agonism, the latter advocated by Chantal Mouffe in “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?” (Journal of Social Research, Vol 66. No3, Prospects for democracy, fall 1999, pp734-759, John Hopkins University Press). According to Mouffe any kind of societal consensus is always political and necessarily a hegemonic expression of power. This theory is contested in turn by DoYun Kim who proposed Nietzsche’s ‘agonistic democracy’ as alternative, as well as by Jurgen Habermas’ legal cosmopolitanism (Jurgen Habermas. “The Theory of Communicative Action” 1984 Beacon Press).

Meanwhile, planning engaging communities became part of academic learning (e.g. Pablo Sensa and Daniel Fitzpatrick, Community-Led Regeneration, 2020 UCL Press). So did ‘co-production (e.g. Cassidy Johnson et al, “Co-Production of Knowledge in Action: emancipatory strategies for urban equality, 2025 UCL Press, with focus on the global south). Numerous planning practitioners engaged with communities in their urban development projects, both in the global north and the global south. For this reason IUPF has chosen public participation as one of its nine key topics to investigate and develop, drawing on the knowledge and experience of its members.

Judith Ryser, 18 September 2025.