PC01 PUBLIC PARTICIPATION

Aim

Guarantee the people influence in the city transformation.

Why?

Sustainable urbanism requires close collaboration between administrations, technicians and citizens to implement sustainability policies. The incidence of citizens is a basic condition so that they can make it their own, identify and be involved in tasks and actions, and thus multiply its transforming potential.

It is basic in the sustainable development to evolve into a improved democracy model towards a new system that has its maximum possibilities of expression at the municipal level.

How?

Although in the urban regulations, the public participation in certain processes is already established, this does not guarantee its effectivity. The administration should make easy every interaction between the different actors during the participation process: experts, administration or individual citizens. So there must be crearly defined theobjective of the participation and to provide a space for each one, but allowing their relationship during the process, instead of segregating them in different channels.

These are some guidelines that should rule the processes:

► Promote transparency in management
– Provide access to information
– Create channels to allow the flow of information in both directions

► Favouring the training of citizens
– produce specific information resources, workshops and debates on town planning
– Promote environmental education and awareness

► Integrate participation into planning
– In the diagnosis process and in strategic decision making
– Integrate Agenda21 into planning

► Integrate all social perspectives
– Give special value to the gender perspective
– Count on other vulnerable groups (elderly, immigrants, unemployed)

Terms, goals and limits of the participation process

– Objectives should be set that can be perceived as a reply to the general interest, not to justify particular interests or as part of an administrative protocol.

– Objectives must be defined in a way that explains the need for co-responsibility, avoiding paternalism.

– Whoever promotes the process has to convince of the capacity and willingness to make them a reality, setting goals to be achieved from the beginning and the resources to achieve them.

– Both urbanism technicians and participation specialists must be present from the beginning of the participatory processes, and have contact with the citizens from these first stages, not only to break the initial mutual mistrust, but also to become familiar with the ways in which the citizens express the urban discourse and for the citizens to become familiar with the urban language.

– The celebration of the sessions in the site of the intervention is highly recommended, especially when it comes to vulnerable environments, it is a sign of respect and empathy for the affected population.

– The good choice of the date and hour of the meetings is essential to ensure attendance, which requires a detailed knowledge of the cultural patterns of those affected.

– Given that urban planning involves the unavoidable use of graphic documents, when it comes to representing the proposals, the right choice of graphics that can be understood by all citizens is very important.

– The permanent feedback of the mid-term and final results of the processes must be public: it should not only be available for those involved in the events, but any citizen affected.

– It should include explicit recognition of the work of all participants in the event.

– It should include guidelines for the continuity of the process, clearly explaining the next steps to be taken.

– The results evaluation phase should be planned from the beginning and throughout the entire process, linking as far as possible the objectives to measurable indicators.
– Self-criticism and the ability to learn from successes and mistakes is a substantial part of the evaluation process and must be taken on board by all the actors involved.

– The more accurate the initial diagnosis of aspirations and needs is and the better the intervention adapts to that diagnosis, the more citizens will be willing to accept and positively assess the results, even if they do not exactly meet their expectations.

elCASC. Villena. Source: http://elfabricantedeespheras.com

Workshop Smart-Cities /// Instituto Tecnológico de la cerámica. Source: http://elfabricantedeespheras.com