Public participation in City-Shaping: Co-production beyond the Copy-book Approach

Public participation in planning processes is legislatively mandated to varying degrees across Australian jurisdictions. It is prosecuted as a mechanism for equitable, effective and democratic decision-making by a variety of... [ view full abstract ]

Public participation in planning processes is legislatively mandated to varying degrees across Australian jurisdictions. It is prosecuted as a mechanism for equitable, effective and democratic decision-making by a variety of stakeholder groups. However, in some areas, the enduring imperative for public participation can lead to reliance on previous techniques and path-dependent approaches rather than ‘engagement for place’. In particular, assumptions about citizens and the type of involvement policy-makers have come to expect can hamper efforts to co-produce place.

This paper presents learnings from several large-scale public participation processes in major strategic, land use and infrastructure planning contexts in Australia’s largest and most rapidly developing city, Sydney. In searching for more inclusive, democratic and equitable forms of co-production, we focus on how to best support citizens engaging in complex city planning processes, identifying how people want to engage in city shaping and what they see as the most important decisions they should be involved in. We find that in attempting to refresh engagement, a focus on the types of evidence, information, and education citizens require to engage with place, alongside attention to how processes be designed from the outset can enable citizens to arrive at informed and considered views that dispel policy maker expectations of citizen involvement in co-producing place.

Keywords: City-shaping; citizen engagement; co-production; public participation; Sydney global city.