A Ladder of Citizen Participation

Last week, we elaborated a new discussion topic a ladder of citizen participation. What does citizen participation means? Is this means mechanism for public to express opinions or process of protesting, influenced by different political ideologies. Ultimate result will be power to the citizen from either process. To describe about this topic in planning viewpoint, I would like to describe more about article name “a ladder of citizen participation”.

In 1969 Sherry Arstein tried to discuss about a ladder of citizen participation showing eight different types of participation. She defines citizen participation as the redistribution of power that enables the have- not citizens, presently excluded from the political and economic process, to be deliberately included in the future.

She had described the one by one step in the ladder. The first two steps of ladder are Manipulation and Therapy. These two steps describe the levels of non-participation, where their objectives are not to enable people to participate in planning, but to enable power holders to educate the participants. Next two steps are Informing and Consultation; objectives are to inform the citizens but no response about people’s views and ideas. In next step, Placation; people are allow to have advice but the power holders will make the final decisions.

Further up the ladder are levels of citizen with increasing degrees of decision- making. The 6^th step is Partnership, which enables people to negotiate and engage in trade-offs with traditional power holders. In the last two steps of ladder, Delegated power and citizen control, the have-not citizen obtain the majority of decision- making seats or full managerial power.  

Even though people are not fully getting power to make decision today, but they are actively engaging in sharing views and ideas. Today they are in tokenism phase of ladder, people are informed and consulted and placated. There are some examples like London Mayor’s plan, people were informed, open for consultation and input were valued and final decision was made by mayor.

There are lots of advantages of giving power to citizen than disadvantages. This does not mean giving all power to citizens will make planning process successful. But the collaboration between citizens, expert planner and different private and public agencies, discussion about next alternate plan, sharing ideas and views between them will definitely produce a successful plan.