@article {Brownill:2019:0263-7960:7,
title = "Framing People and Planning: 50 Years of Debate",
journal = "Built Environment",
parent_itemid = "infobike://alex/benv",
publishercode ="alex",
year = "2019",
volume = "45",
number = "1",
publication date ="2019-04-01T00:00:00",
pages = "7-25",
itemtype = "ARTICLE",
issn = "0263-7960",
url = "https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alex/benv/2019/00000045/00000001/art00002",
doi = "doi:10.2148/benv.45.1.7",
author = "Brownill, Sue and Inch, Andy",
abstract = "The last 50 years have not only seen major changes in the forms and practices of
participation but also in the ways in which it has been characterized and understood.
Alongside the report of the Skeffi ngton Committ ee on public participation in
planning, 1969 saw the publication of Sherry Arnstein’s ‘ladder of participation’
which famously typifi ed participation from tokenism to citizen control. Since then the
ladder has been replaced by the networks of collaborative planning and both have been
challenged by the focus on planning’s ‘dark side’ where participation is associated
with coercive forms of governmentality and governance through community. This
article discusses the evolution of these ideas, not to provide a historiography per
se, but to highlight the themes, issues and contradictions they suggest lie behind
participation. These include debates about the extent to which power can ever be
devolved to the people; clashes between the diff erent modes of governance inherent
in planning (representative, legal/bureaucratic, participatory); the signifi cance of
action outside the formal participation apparatus (insurgent planning); and the
ways in which the publics of planning have been made and remade within diff erent
planning regimes, often with profound implications for the inclusion and exclusion
of diff erent social groups and concerns. The article concludes that as a result public
participation in planning can be seen as a shifting terrain of underlying tensions
and contradictions, which presents both openings and closures for citizens seeking to
infl uence the use and development of land.",
}