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geograph-hitje · 6 years

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Discussion: In the case of urban planning, community engagement is a futile exercise.

Written September 2018.

Worldwide, urban populations are rapidly expanding. In Australia, after decades of theorisation upon the country’s future population and debate regarding its optimal one, it appears a ‘Big Australia’ with megacities as its focal point is beginning to be realised (Walker, et al., 2018). Thus, the outlook of our cities is changing. While the exact insinuations of this evolution of civilization are uncertain, they are sure to be significant. The modes of urban planning undertaken in anticipation of and throughout our future are obviously critical to how people will live it. Indeed, the field of urban planning has been described as having ‘significant ramifications on the human condition’ (Bajracharya, et al., 2008), and so it seems logical for ordinary citizens to engage with it in some way. In fact, community engagement in urban planning has only recently attracted serious attention due to an international trend of governments reorganising their planning systems (Brownill, 2009). The increasingly complex and diverse nature of contemporary societies emphasises the importance of community engagement (Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018) and so, a dichotomy between traditional practice and more participatory approaches is emerging. Successfully conducting community engagement has also proven difficult. Although generally regarded as the right thing to do (Clifford, 2012), in practice, multiple constraints including those of time, money, established planning processes and power relations often make community engagement seem futile. However, any observed futility should not rationalise the abandonment of community engagement in urban planning. It should instead encourage a greater focus by planners upon alternative approaches to community engagement. The overall usefulness of the exercise can be analysed through its multiple dimensions: as a fusion of representative and participatory democracy, a tool of the urban planning profession and as a mechanism operating within a predominantly neoliberal global economy. Further, creativity and the internet may hold the key to shrinking the gap between a utopian practice of community engagement and its current reality.

Image source. ‘Designs for what would become Australia's tallest building’, ‘Urban planning experts have warned Melbourne is at risk of becoming a high-rise 'mega city'’.

A manifestation of democracy

Community engagement fuses elements of participatory democracy into a system of representative democracy. Recognising that a hybrid form of democracy is often produced in current community engagement exercises (Brownill, 2009), rather than one in which participation destabilises systems of governance or fulfils a mere superficial purpose, is important. This is because a hybrid focus provides a clearer understanding of new forms of planning than analyses that typify them in an extreme way, i.e. as either revolutionary or totally futile (Guertz & Van de wijdeven, 2010).The tensions that transpire from this hybridity in most cases work to curb the utility of community engagement. Tensions originate in assumptions made by the (usually government affiliated) planning body conducting the urban planning. Assumptions concern the method and role of public participation, including at what stage of the planning process community engagement occurs. An English governmental publication detailing revised planning processes from the early 2000s provides an example. The document clarifies that while one aim of community engagement is to enable greater decision-making by people for their own communities, it cannot substitute ‘proper’ decision-making by accountable institutions (ODPM, 2004). Such descriptions indicate to the community how much (or little) their input is valued, and hence how it will influence the final plan. The assumptions typically made by governmental planning bodies therefore convey:

a) a lack of understanding of how community engagement can be useful, which may be partially due to the shortage of research upon government-citizen collaboration (Wanna, 2008), and/or

b) a failure to attempt to rectify the anti-community engagement influence of private sector and political actors (Lithgow & Stewart, 2014) due to lack of governmental independence or good faith in the community engagement process.

Additionally, successful collaboration between governments and communities has been identified as dependant on several, infrequently present factors. These include a mutual interest in outcomes and a positive culture through dedicated public servants (Lithgow & Stewart, 2014).

These multifaceted challenges to the value of community engagement have been successfully combatted through the work of motivated and well-educated teams. While community engagement practices are limited by established decision-making processes, they simultaneously create opportunities as new kinds of spaces are generated (Brownill, 2009). Such spaces are best taken advantage of through well planned process models, like that devised and empirically validated by Konsti-Laakso and Rantala (2018). Their process model utilised ‘facilitative modelling’ amongst other techniques, which compelled community engagement participants (i.e. both community members and professionals) to structure the problematic situation, agree on a focus, develop a model of objectives and develop action plans (Konsti-Laakso & Rantala, 2018). Innovative and skilfully formulated methods of community engagement can thus uncover its usefulness through enabling participants to better comprehend the overall process. Characteristically complex and lengthy community engagement processes (Guertz & Van de wijdeven, 2010) are thereby rendered manageable.

Image source. ‘A tongue-in-cheek comment on the view on public participation from within the planning profession.’

A tool for urban planners

Community engagement practices should not be regarded as discrediting the expertise of urban planners and related professionals. Rather, they can serve to complement and enhance the quality of work of these specialists. A study which conducted interviews with several planners in Great Britain revealed that most saw community engagement as a useful exercise as well as ‘the right thing to do’ (Clifford, 2012). Mixed justifications for this response were observed, including:

a) Community engagement can improve the product of a planning process through deepening the planners’ understanding of the area,

b) Community engagement allows greater insight into public preference regarding how an area should develop, and

c) It is seen to add legitimacy to the planning process (Clifford, 2012).

It is uncertain whether this final point implied legitimacy is derived from incorporation of community opinions into the panning outcome or that simply conducting community engagement exercises gives an air of legitimacy, regardless of how the resulting information is used. The latter was supported by the comments of one planner who cited the utility of community engagement as primarily lying in the transparency it creates (Clifford, 2012). Arnstein conveniently expressed this idea of varying degrees of engagement in her ‘degrees of participation’ ladder (Arnstein, 1969). The tendency of community engagement practices to operate at the lower rungs of the ladder (i.e. as therapeutic non-participation or tokenism) may be attributable to the high-pressure situations ‘street level bureaucrats’ regularly find themselves under (Lipsky, 1980) as well as political motives. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that Clifford (2012) found planners broadly supported community engagement genuinely: as a valuable source of local knowledge.

Image source. Arnstein’s ‘degrees of participation’ ladder.

The presence of professionals in community engagement practices may produce an inaccurate gauge of public opinion upon a project, so restricting the utility of a community engagement exercise. Habermas, through his idea of communicative rationality, and later, Healey both conveyed a belief that issues of power relations stemming from authorities’ expertise could be set aside through inter-subjective reasoning in the form of collaborative planning (Healey, 1997). Collaborative planning is based upon consensus building through collaboration. It is aimed at building new knowledge and transforming understandings through interactions between a diverse group of individuals (McGuirk, 2001). The theory can, however, be criticised as impracticable because power relations between participants can be argued as impossible to set aside. The education and profession of a participant in a collaborative planning forum is inseparable from the way that individual thinks and presents themselves. Examination of the ‘top … community engagement challenges facing urban planning’ supports this claim. Listening with a lack of intent to interpret concerns and unspoken needs, a lack of specific and personally meaningful questions, and the use of jargon to hinder communication are listed as some of the greatest challenges to producing useful community engagement (Hubbard & Abbot, 2012). All these obstructions are related to the way language and knowledge is (often unconsciously) used to assert power.

So, the interplay between citizens and professionals necessitated by community engagement will probably result in inequality regarding whose opinions are listened to. This inaccuracy undermines the utility of community engagement but should not lead to the conclusion that it is futile. The fact that the aforementioned obstructions are identifiable indicates that their incidence can be minimised. This is increasingly happening through use of the internet and related innovative technologies, as will be explored below.

Economic constraints and considerations

That most community engagement exercises do not achieve their full utilitarian potential is commonly attributed to economic constraints associated with neoliberalism. While this attribution may be largely accurate, the classification of community engagement as an exercise which merely reinforces a destructive neoliberal agenda is overly simplistic (Brownill, 2009). It disregards the potential of good community engagement to contest the shortcomings of the current economic paradigm.

Economic constraints upon useful community engagement come in several forms, with the following being the most observable. Firstly, the cost of conducting a community engagement process itself may be prohibitive (Hubbard & Abbot, 2012). Secondly, the cost of modifying a plan in response to alterations, objections and suggestions arising from consultation may not be realistic. Finally, community engagement may be rendered futile where urban planning is market-driven and thereby inflexibly geared to optimise economic profit, to the local community’s detriment (as in the case study conducted by Roy, 2015). The degree of futility in the latter case depends upon the approach to community engagement undertaken. The Habermasian collaborative planning approach has been criticised as particularly susceptible to being used by market-driven planning bodies to reinforce the present neoliberal hegemony (Roy, 2015). It is argued that the collaborative planning theory is easily co-opted by market-led planning projects, and that this nurtures a post-political condition (Roy, 2015). Such a condition ‘annuls democracy’ through consensus building and hence directly contradicts the deepening of democracy that collaborative planning aims to achieve (Swyngedouw, 2010). Consensus building is thus an exceptionally problematic aspect of collaborative planning as it permits the manipulation of community participation so as to avoid disagreement. Consequently, it also avoids threatening the existing order of things (Allmendinger & Haughton, 2011). Hence, community engagement approaches which encourage dialectical analysis as opposed to consensus are probably more successful in opposing discriminatory urban planning driven by ideas of neoliberalism. Local government officials, planners and policy-makers dedicated to the cause of fostering more democratic planning through effective community engagement have the responsibility of realising these alternative approaches (Roy, 2015). Their focus should lie in supporting marginalised groups to challenge market-driven urban development through debate and criticism (Roy, 2015). The viability of carrying out such approaches is of course hindered by economic constraints as listed above. In response, committed planning professionals should lobby for greater funding and resources a) by guiding the mobilisation of marginalised communities to speak up for themselves through innovative political strategies (Roy, 2015), and b) for their own benefit, as planners who strive to perform their role ethically and adeptly.

Moreover, providing the time and funding needed to implement useful community engagement, especially towards the beginning of an urban planning process, can save government spending in the long term. This is connected to the presumption held by planners that community engagement can qualitatively improve urban planning outcomes. It is doubtful that any planner or developer wants to see a project incur the same fate as the infamous Pruitt-Igoe development (Flint, 2014). Such a failure proves that the stubborn nature of local cultures is embedded into the city, ‘and unconsciously guides even those who are determined to radically alter the image of the city’ (Lindner, 2006). Clearly, an urban place cannot be properly understood by relying solely on economic models (Collie, 2011). Community engagement can inform planners about how to maximise their funding through educating them upon what the community needs and desires from a development.

Image source. ‘The implosion of the Pruitt-Igoe housing project complex in St. Louis is shown in “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth.”’

Emerging alternative techniques

On top of approach- or process-based solutions to futile community engagement practices; innovative uses of narrative and technology can be used to enhance the quality of participation by community members in urban planning.

As community engagement is seldom practised in an ideal manner, a cynicism and apathy amongst community members can develop which makes mobilising informative, representative citizen participation difficult (Callanan 2005). This may be resolved using narrative, which engages participants’ imagination when it comes to thinking about the future. In this way the emotional connection of people to place can be uncovered and harnessed to produce useful community engagement (Collie, 2011). One genre of narrative which is potentially constructive in this context is science fiction. Some analysis suggests that the tendency of science fiction to explore futuristic urban environments can be used by planners to engage community members with the history and potential future of their homes (Collie, 2011). Hypothetically, this method could also overcome the tendency of cynical community engagement participants to be irrationally averse to development. Ideas produced through such an exercise would give planners an insight into participants’ ‘blue sky’ vision of the future; i.e. one not constrained by preconceptions or present economic and political factors.

Sci-fi City: ‘Spike Jonze boldly bucks the retro trend in creating a vivid future L.A. in 'Her,' a thoughtful meditation on tech and culture.’ Image source.

The internet and related computer programs can provide a solution to the democratic shortfalls of standard community engagement practices. A virtual participatory culture regarding space can be observed in the prevalence of geotagging on social media platforms, and functions similar to that within Google Maps which enables photographs and reviews of a destination to be posted and viewed by anyone ‘at’ that location on the virtual map (Google, 2018). These phenomena have been described as ‘volunteered geographic information’ (Goodchild, 2007). Such recent developments in geographic information systems are suspected have the ability to facilitate greater understanding of cities by people and provide new opportunities for them to collaborate with architects and planners (Bajracharya, et al., 2008). The ubiquity and accessibility of the internet may not only democratise community engagement but render it more time-efficient as less face-to-face contact between planners and participants may be required.

Image source. Google Maps enables photographs and reviews of a destination to be posted and viewed by anyone ‘at’ that location on the virtual map.

Therefore, community engagement is not an inherently futile exercise; though is it often poorly practiced. There are viable ways of enhancing the utility of community engagement. Effective process models use the space opened by community engagement practices to provide a framework which makes complex urban planning processes comprehensible. Such frameworks ease tensions between community engagement and established decision-making processes through facilitating productive dialogue between community members and planners. Urban planners generally see community engagement as useful. The outcomes of urban planning can be significantly improved if good community engagement forms part of the urban planning process. Power relations between individuals of differing expertise within a community engagement exercise are recognised and thus techniques promoting equity can be implemented. Although the utility of community engagement can be greatly compromised by economic constraints in various forms, planners have the power to mitigate the effects of this. Additionally, if properly conducted, community engagement can ensure that funding put towards development is profitably expended. Finally, new and creative uses of narrative and the internet can help improve the quality of citizen participation as well as resolve issues of inequality and time constraints. Good community engagement is an invaluable source of local knowledge and context. Through ensuring this source is accessed and utilised, committed urban planners can enable a smooth transition into a more densely populated and sustainable future.

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