Andreas Panagidis

Public participation in planning is an enduring concern of scholars and practitioners regarding its practice; its inclusiveness and effectiveness. Participation can be a long-term relationship ‒ as in engagement ‒ or more short term in response to formal requirements ‒ as in consultation‒. New hands-on tools which involve innovative and experimental methods of engaging citizens are increasingly used in many countries to enhance citizen participation and collaboration in planning (AlWaer & Cooper, 2020; Rizzo et al., 2021; Scholl & Kemp, 2016). Hence, there is a growing interest in new forms of democratic practices in planning, which is fomenting the application of new technologies to support decision making. Within the UK planning system, Community Consultation (CC) is the main statutory method for involving citizens in local planning processes. Typically, it takes place in “invited spaces” of participation that are state-led. However, some main drawbacks of the current CC processes have been pointed out (Lawson et al, 2022; Wargent & Parker, 2018); namely, under-resourced local councils, the dominance of technocratic processes that limit the scope of participation, consultation used for building consensus around new pro-growth initiatives to housing development and the uneven representation of disadvantaged groups. Recent research in the UK has revealed that CC leading to the development of a local area plan can be tokenistic, as decisions by powerful actors such as housing developers carry more weight, while input from communities comes at a time when many planning and housing design decisions have been already made (CaCHE, 2020). Official CC activities for citizen participation in the UK include the consultation on local development plans which takes place approximately every five years or the opportunity to comment on a specific planning application in a place. These processes are time consuming and demanding for community members, often involving consultation with a demographic group that is not representative. Therefore, the practice of CC is currently being reviewed in order to respond to these concerns. Community Consultation for Quality of Life (CCQoL) is a UK-based research project that explores the ways in which civic participation in CC becomes much more meaningful, inclusive and engaging. This research project is part of four pilot projects being developed in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland with the participation of community groups, academic researchers, industry partners and local authorities. One of the main methods used to investigate CC is the Urban Room concept. The Urban Room is located on the ground floor of Broad Street Mall in central Reading. Reading is a large town half an hour to the west of London by rail and is characterised by its diverse population and high density of creative industries. The combination of innovation in the physical space, using an Urban Room for conducting research and the digital consultation tools are at the core of the CCQoL project. The key elements examined through my participation in this case study are the two foremost methods being used: (a) the establishment of an experimental Urban Room for community groups to have a platform for face-to-face participation and (b) a new method of social value mapping via a digital mapping interface available on smart phones, tablets as well as in the Urban Room and home computers. As the aim of the project is to improve planning consultation, the physical location is used for the research team to test the use of the Commonplace digital consultation platform in a real-life scenario. Commonplace is one of the leading consultation platforms in the UK. It is currently going through a period of review and will be relaunched as Commonplace 2.0 in the summer 2022.   The Urban Room As defined by the Urban Rooms Network facilitated by the Place Alliance, the purpose of an Urban Room is: “to foster meaningful connections between people and place, using creative methods of engagement to encourage active participation in the future of our buildings, streets and neighbourhoods”. (Urban Room Network, 2022) Running in parallel to the activities of the Urban Room at Reading, there is a website as a platform for online participation which clearly and concisely sets out: “We need your help to develop the Quality of Life maps of Reading. These will tell us about what you value in your place and help us create a wide-ranging resource of local knowledge” (CCQoL Reading, 2022). In the physical space of the Urban Room, posters provide more information regarding the community groups and other partners involved.   The Urban Room is in a shopping centre located at the end of a very busy, pedestrianised shopping street. This space was provided free of charge by the mall’s management company, Moorgarth. There are two ways in which people usually access the room: they can either casually drop in as they pass by or attend a scheduled event. The Urban Room was organised very quickly, over four months, with a minimal budget of roughly £3,000. Most of its equipment was borrowed from the school of architecture. Great efforts have been made to promote the Urban Room through social media. As a result, the initiative has received a lot of attention from local community groups. Over the course of five weeks in March 2022, a large number of events were planned, with many community groups convened by the project’s Community Partnerships Manager. Each week had its own theme: Introduction and Business Community, Health and Wellbeing, Culture and Heritage, Climate Change and The Future of Reading. The events were planned with the dual function of providing a platform for underrepresented groups to exhibit their community actions and discuss issues that affect them and as a way of attracting people to the space. One of the most important benefits of the Urban Room events was the opportunity for community representatives of different organisations to learn about each other’s activities and discuss about common concerns face-to-face. This makes the Urban Room a space of learning, not only about the city but about the participants. However, the establishment of an Urban Room as an experimental setting for engaging people in the creation of place-based knowledge has already presented various challenges. The fact that it is “tucked away” in a shopping centre has made it less visible to the public, making it hard to attract a diverse demographic. Also, as a quasi-public space, it has not been clear how to manage who is allowed in the room or not and at which times. Furthermore, some comments by participants indicate that there is too much information on display, especially for those on the autism spectrum, Finally, researchers have pointed out that the 60 or so workshops and activities might have been too many.   Social Value Mapping During the activities of the Urban Room, in which as a university researcher I was a participant observer, one of the key activities that community members participated in was the use of a digital mapping tool. The main benefit of a digital consultation platform is that it can reach more people. In addition, it can be blended with physical learning. In the Commonplace platform within the Urban Room there is a map of Reading on which participants can drop a pin to locate where they (a) connect with nature; (b) feel healthy; (c) feel a sense of belonging; (d) feel a sense of wonder; (e) feel a sense of control over their environment and; (f) find it easy to get around their area. These categories are based on the Quality of Life Framework (Quality of Life Foundation, 2021) and provide the opportunity for residents of Reading to reveal qualitative data that will be then visualised in the form of a map that captures social value (Samuel & Hatleskog, 2020). Participants often show interest in the contributions that others place on the map, indicating that the tool can function as a way to establish connections and ‒ I would argue ‒ also to create social capital. However, from the initial examination of the findings, the ability to only map the existing, positive characteristics of spaces does not allow participants to raise concerns about places they would like to see improved. The project’s research team have made an ethical decision to focus on the positive attributes of the place as the inclusion of negative impacts on publicly available maps can have a long-term negative impact on identity. Therefore, in the use of the digital mapping tool, citizens’ degree of influence and level of decision-making power remains limited. After speaking to the research team about this, I realised that consultations always need to clarify the limit of their influence. Since the research project is not an official CC linked to a real development plan, there would be a problem in addressing the participants’ concerns. Interestingly, this is a problem particularly observed in official CC processes by local governments that do not respond to the issues raised during the consultation so that community concerns are often disregarded as not being “a material consideration in a planning sense” (Lawson et al, 2022). Therefore, contested issues and oppositional views present the difficulty of how to respond to them. However, regarding the mapping of positive characteristics, when maps are made available to the community they can provide transparency and accountability of the planning process regarding the spatial interpretation of social value.   Reflection & discussion It can be argued that an Urban Room is similar to an Urban Living Lab (ULL) in the sense that they combine an environment and a methodology with a focus on real-life interventions by urban experimentation and collaboration between different stakeholders which has become popular in Europe (McCormick & Hartmann, 2017; Steen & van Bueren, 2017). An ULL almost always involves the goal of innovation in the face of contemporary urban challenges. Importantly, emphasis is placed on citizen-centred approaches to co-design and social innovation. However, an ULL for planning is typically used in sites for experimentation and often in a context where an intervention for alternative urban governance arrangements and sustainability transitions is taking place. Urban Rooms, on the other hand, seem to be placing more emphasis on enhancing the ties between groups of people, to provide a forum for discussion and for building awareness of local issues (Urban Room Network, 2022). Another important distinction is that an ULL places more emphasis on co-creation  by involving citizens in the development of services and planning experiments (Höflehner & Zimmermann, 2016; Scholl & de Kraker, 2021; Scholl & Kemp, 2016). At the same time, co-production between local governments and citizens in collaborative planning processes is observed in design-led planning events such as charrettes (AlWaer & Cooper, 2020). Therefore, there seems to be an opportunity to redefine the Urban Room as an ULL and integrate it in planning charrettes in order to give importance to the decision-making power of participation in planning. Furthermore, despite some technical difficulties and limitations, a digital mapping tool can be a useful method of legitimising citizens’ views in planning policy, especially if it is improved to incorporate more nuanced and critical inputs.

The Oosterwold greenfield site in the Netherlands, spanning 4,300 hectares near the town of Almere, represents a well-documented example of large-scale self-organisation and urban development. Initially established as a Dutch New Town in the 1970s within the greater Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, Almere’s first phase of development embraced poly-nuclear, low-rise, and child-friendly neighbourhood plans, incorporating social housing and small-scale public amenities. Subsequent phases witnessed a shift towards more rational and uniform urban plans, characterized by market-led housing development, taking advantage of its proximity to Amsterdam amid urban growth in the 20th century. In 2006, a new council looked for alternatives to large-scale housing production, leading to the sale of municipally owned plots to individual households. Further programmes to financially support the private and collective commissioning of affordable housing were later introduced in partnership with the housing corporation Alliante. After the 2008 financial crisis, Almere’s approach to suburban housing began to shift towards enabling participation and self-organisation by citizens, with principles of active citizenship playing a prominent role (Boonstra, 2015).    The ongoing development of the Oosterwold area represents the latest and most  experimental  urban extension community  built on greenfield land. This initiative has provided Almere’s municipality with an opportunity to further explore the liberalisation of planning and housing development by selling land to individuals, housing associations and professional developers. It is being implemented as an “organic area development”, meaning that there is no predetermined master plan, only experimental land use rules related to the division of space. These rules encompass various aspects such as the division of space according to use categories, terms of energy production, sanitation and floor area ratios. For example, the rules stipulate the ratio between buildable land, urban farming and publicly accessible green areas per plot. This type of plot-by-plot ratio approach encourages the realization of a distinctive urban-agricultural lifestyle. This experimental approach, also referred to as “do-it-yourself urbanism”, not only empowers residents to construct on their own plots (unconventional for Dutch norms), but also, unconventionally, allows them to collectively decide the design and management of other infrastructural components such as roads, waste management, water management, energy supply and green spaces in communal land (MVRDV, 2022).   Thanks to this innovative arrangement of co-production of services, plots were offered at rates which were lower than market value, providing citizens with an opportunity to integrate agriculture with housing. In Oosterwold, active citizens organized themselves and share responsibility with the government in delivering  public services, such as the management of water facilities, which would otherwise fall under complete government control (van Karnenbeek et al., 2021). The variety of built residential projects is vast. Some residents were attracted to Oosterwold because they were interested in living off the grid, starting with as little as a camper van and expanding outwards. Another project involves a 100 m long co-living building designed for a group of friends, horizontally connected in a row of units of 160 square meters each. To connect the diverse shapes and sizes of structures with public infrastructure such as roads and wastewater, a high level of community participation and self-organisation was required. A dedicated website provides information for potential dwellers, including an initial letter of intent, options to collaborate with neighbours to set up an association to build the access road, the submission of a development plan, obtaining an environmental permit, and other responsibilities entrusted to the “initiator” of a housing initiative. The initiators can be individuals, cooperatives or real estate developers capable of producing housing at either market or affordable costs. The processes of collective decision-making and collaborative governance are monitored by numerous neighbourhood organizations already active in Oosterwold, discussing among other topics the need for more affordable housing. Consultation meetings, involving residents, local farmers, developers, utility companies, and municipality officials, are held regularly.   Cozzolino et al. (2017, p. 55) explain that the framework-rules allow for “greater use of dispersed knowledge”, indicating a high degree of flexibility. However, this flexibility raises concerns about the potential for the public agency to operate in a discretionary manner, especially regarding rule interpretations and agreements between private initiators and the municipality at the local scale (Cozzolino et al., 2017). Addressing debates surrounding the notion of localism, and considering the selectiveness of policies supporting self-organisation and active citizenship, there is a danger of new forms of exclusivity emerging. The Dutch Wijkaanpak, meaning “neighbourhood approach”, is criticized by Savini (2016) who explains how “self-organization may undermine the capacity of public governments to balance increasing socio-economic inequalities across city-regions and to sustain exclusionary and selective practices of spatial appropriation” (p. 1153). This way, under the guise of increased freedom in planning, plan-led development by the state can be replaced with neoliberal, property-led development (Chevalier & Tzaninis, 2022). Furthermore, such endeavours tend to need more time and higher levels of expertise, which attracts private actors with higher economic and social capital rather than low-income residents (Levelt & Tan, 2023). Finally, other authors criticize the incremental approach of self-organised wastewater management in Oosterwold for jeopardising environmental standards (van Karnenbeek et al., 2021) Nonetheless, despite the increasing development of privately-owned housing and the underdevelopment of social housing (Van Straalen et al., 2017), the Oosterwold way of planning has facilitated some cohousing projects and those by larger developers that prioritize open space and agriculture while minimising the square meters of living areas. For instance, projects such as 't Groene Wold by the developer Vastbouw integrate sustainability and the Oosterwold framework of urban agriculture, water collection and public facilities while providing about 70% of rental properties in the affordable segment. Additionally, the co-production of public services in Oosterwold, which could also be considered as common-pool resources, represents a real-life experiment in social infrastructure, public services, and housing provision simultaneously. Direct citizen engagement in Oosterwold, involving decisions about land use and the planning of services, such as wastewater and energy production, is an innovative approach to neighbourhood development and urban governance. While not without expected challenges, especially concerning the need to consolidate infrastructural components, this more flexible project-based planning has created opportunities to test various housing typologies and open space layouts that can grow incrementally and also diffuse initial housing costs. The primary focus of this case study is the incremental and experimental civic-led urban development strategy implemented in residential greenfield sites. When analysing urban developments characterized by increased self-governance and self-organisation in planning, the project’s scale, ranging from the plot to the district level, becomes a decisive factor (Rauws, 2016).  This highlights the imperative for planning experiments at the neighbourhood level , specifically addressing the provision of affordable housing. Starting from the individual plot and expanding with a do-it-yourself ethos to the level of community self-organisation, these experiments in urban growth have the potential to challenge the market-dependent institutions of housing development. They can achieve this by establishing collaborative governance arrangements between local government and civil society organisations.  

In 2003 Urban Centre Bologna was formed to communicate with citizens how the city was changing regarding a new mobility masterplan and other urban planning strategies promoted by the municipality. In 2014, the city council passed the “regulation on public collaboration between citizens and the city for the care and regeneration of urban commons,” which allowed citizens and private organizations to sign collaboration pacts with the city in order to improve public space, green areas, and abandoned buildings. In 2017, Bologna’s government launched a participatory budgeting process, inviting citizens to submit proposals for projects that would engage residents and reimagine the urban commons (Cities of Service, 2024). As an evolution of these efforts, the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana (FIU) was founded by the city of Bologna to promote "relationships between local government, universities, firms, the tertiary sector and citizens" (FIU, 2024). The goal has been to produce better communication instruments and to foster social equity, cultural innovation and the transition to climate neutrality by identifying the most effective methodologies for citizen participation in local urban regeneration stratefies. The FIU uses different tools to foster citizen participation and collaboration with other local stakeholders and academic/research organisations in decision-making processes. It is structured by different research centres and departments working with the underlying regulatory framework titled the Urban Innovation Plan, linked with the Participatory Budget, which connects public policy with collaborative governance/co-production methods.       By using the Urban Living Lab methodoly, the aim was to stimulate and guide experimentation and innovation projects in the regeneration of spaces and buildings of public interest. The FIU organised District Laboratories (FIU, 2024) and used participation and co-production to reveal priorities and lead to participatory budgeting for making improvements to public spaces, organising events to accompany and strengthen the transformation of public spaces, collaboratively and based on local needs (D’alena et al., 2018). For the year 2023, the city provided a budget of three million euros (five hundred thousand euros per neighbourhood) to fund the proposals born out of the visions of active citizens. Proposals were submitted online or at neighbourhood workshops scheduled in the evenings on specific days. After this first stage, the co-design phase finalised the proposals with the support of municipal technical staff and finally the voting phase outlined the six winning projects to be undertaken (Bologna Comune, 2024). The proposals include cultural, artistic and material interventions for regeneration of urban spaces, the enhancement of green areas or public gardens and in general to promote the right to urban public spaces which are open and collaborative. In this strategic experiment pioneered by the city of Bologna, the principles of the urban commons are able to be institutionalised by political advocacy groups and active citizens who are grounded in the territory of their respective community, while also able to reach the level of municipal process. This has been possible due to the municipality guaranteeing the conditions for intermediaries to have access to several financing tools that facilitate network building opportunities and the up-scaling of local actions.