Participative planning with a perspective approach methodology

By project SMART-MR

Published on 20 March 2018

Sweden

Västsverige

Per Kristersson

Senior Regional Planner

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About this good practice

In public planning processes managing peoples’ perspectives are central to success. There are many examples of planning processes where different point of views is seen as the main problem for effective decision-making. But in participatory planning one has to realize that stakeholders’ multiple perspective is a resource for learning and collective decision-making. The methodology was used in the Backa inquiry relating to congestion tax zone alterations.

Resources needed

Facilitators collecting and presenting stakeholders views. Experts and policy makers that can clarify both technical and procedural issues. Public meetings were complemented by surveys, interviews, an interactive homepage and workshops for understanding specific stakeholder categories.

Evidence of success

1. Opening up. Creating decision space through dialogues, professional facilitators, transparency, and access to experts and policy makers that could clarify both technical and procedural issues.
2. Specifying perspectives. Data specifying different perspectives were collected.
3. Narrowing down and integrating perspectives: The last phase aimed at integrating perspectives. A Charrette-approach was used.

Potential for learning or transfer

Implementing a congestion tax stirs up a lot of feelings. Stakeholders, including residents, local services and city development plans all have different opinions about where the congestion zone should be located. Often depending on what side of the zone you are located. This results in that the planning situation is complex with stakeholder’s different opinions that cannot easily find a common solution. By moving from unlimited number of personal opinions to see that there are only a few possible perspectives makes the method a good learning methodology.