Participation caught in-between projects and policies?

Abstract

Over the recent decades, we have experienced a shift away from technocratic planning towards the idea of place-based mediation, and the role of society in making the city. Initiating new readings the role participation and collaboration has on: (a) consensus building between capacity of participants, (b) the encouraging of broad range of contexts to shape evidence-based decision-making, including sociocultural, economic, and technological contexts, and (c) new forms of partnerships and funding between academic, municipalities, and companies. This has lead to contemporary planning practice and theory embracing the idea of reimagining and redefining, complexities and contexts that shape the city. By carrying out a literature review, the discussion of new instruments, strategies and formats, and theories that are currently being employed is expanded on. The author questions if this has lead to an urbanism approach where the strategic and spatial, formal, and informal frameworks of participatory practices appear to coexist.