Participatory planning in a post-socialist urban context: Experience from five cities in central and eastern europe

Abstract

The aim of the chapter is to assess how post-socialist cities and towns encourage the involvement of their citizens into decision-making outside electoral procedures. It presents an analysis of the structures, mechanisms, and specificities related to participatory planning in five municipalities of Central and Eastern Europe: Prague 9 (Czech Republic), Velenje (Slovenia), Székesfehérvár (Hungary), Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria), and Vaslui (Romania). It is based on the self-assessment of public administrators providing their identification and evaluation of the mechanisms as well as their subjective perception of participatory planning at the strategic and neighborhood level. The results revealed that participatory planning remains a great challenge in a post-socialist urban context. We conclude that it is important to work with both citizens and public officials if we want to enforce participatory planning as an efficient governance model.