[B’Spokes: Let me pull this out for emphases: "stakeholders should or must be consulted due to ethical, legal or social obligations."]
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By Michael Hooper
Over the past two years, a growing number of voices have criticized the role of public participation in urban planning. These voices include Andrés Duany, the architect and New Urbanist, who has decried America’s “absolute orgy of public process.1 They also include Tom Campanella, who argues in essays in Planning magazine and the journal Places that, “it’s a fool’s errand to rely upon citizens to guide the planning process.”2, 3 A position justified, Campanella claims, because, “most folks lack the knowledge to make intelligent decisions about the future of our cities.” Criticism of participation is not new, but the increasingly strident tone of anti-participation sentiment should worry citizens and policy makers alike. In fact, there are good reasons to encourage participation in public processes, perhaps now more than ever.
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In their comments on participation as process, critics seldom mention the well-established instrumental benefits of participation. These are the benefits of participation that go beyond the idea that stakeholders should or must be consulted due to ethical, legal or social obligations. While there are powerful arguments for participation on these terms, there is also strong evidence that participation actually improves project outcomes and the likelihood of project success. These outcome-oriented aspects of participation are seldom mentioned by critics and so are worth reiterating. Before doing so, it should be noted that participation is also important as an outcome in its own right. Participation not only has the potential to improve project outcomes, but is itself an outcome. Participation has been shown to have positive spillovers through fostering democratic norms and development of social capital, both of which are important societal objectives.
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Based on data collected from 1965 onwards, they examined 105 wastewater projects and found that participation and project outcomes were positively correlated. A 2000 study by Beierle, of 239 environmental projects, showed that stakeholder participation improved decisions and outcomes.
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This is not to say that participation is a panacea or that the participatory processes currently in use are ideal. But, it is a mistake to broadly criticize participation as an impediment to progress, without recognizing that it also is one of the most important elements in ensuring the success of both the projects that architects and planners want so badly to build and of our cities over the long-term.
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https://americancity.org/buzz/entry/3187/oldId.20111029234335139
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