PARTICIPATION

Learning Objectives

1. To understand the social and historical context of participation and its key tensions and complexities.

2. To understand how participatory practices can empower communities to direct their own development.

3. To explore the limitations of a purely community-level approach, including participatory approaches that attempt to bridge multiple levels and spatial scales to critically engage with power dynamics that produce and reproduce urban poverty and vulnerability.

CHALLENGING PRACTICE: MODULE HANDBOOK

Defining Participation

While the dictionary definition of participation refers to ‘engagement’, the nature of this engagement can vary enormously. Sherry Arnstein’s ladder of participation, which starts with ‘manipulation’ and ends with ‘citizen control’ (Arnstein, 1969) was an attempt to be provocative about the extent of citizen participation within three federal social programmes in 1970s America: urban renewal, antipoverty, and model cities. She claimed that while “participation of the governed in their government is, in theory, the cornerstone of democracy” (Arnstein, 1969) the reality is very different when advocated by marginal groups in society. When the ‘have-not’ communities in America at that time (Black, Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indians, Eskimos and Whites) defined participation as the ‘redistribution of power’, they came up against “racial, ethnic, ideological and political opposition”. (Arnstein, 1969) [See module 3. Social Exclusion]

Participation is about both power and rights. At its most ambitious, participation aims at a ‘redistribution of power’ that enables marginalised communities to join in political and economic processes, and to be included in how information is shared and policies and goals are set. Participation is linked to citizenship, and thus “recasts participation as a right, not simply an invitation offered to the beneficiaries of development”. (Gaventa, 2007) The role of participation in partnerships and governance is critical.

Participation as a Cornerstone of Informal Urbanism

Today almost one billion people, one sixth of the world’s total population, live in informal settlements in developing countries. [See module 7. Informal Settlements] There have also been shifts in how housing policies for low-income people are approached, and in the roles of built environment professionals. ‘Providing for’ such populations has changed to ‘supporting’ them. (Tovivich, 2008)

Since the 1970s, the limitations of the topdown, technocratic, modernist approach to city planning and housing development have become increasingly apparent. Non-government organizations (NGOs), the private sector and citizens increasingly pushed for a greater role in shaping urban development and housing policies and practices. Informal settlement communities demonstrated that they could improve their living conditions quicker, more cost effectively, in a manner that was better suited to their needs and values, and with greater chances of long-term sustainability than top-down government-led interventions. [See module 7. Informal Settlements] For many stakeholders, therefore, participation became an expedient way to achieve change on a larger scale than was previously possible. While for others, it was part of a broader agenda for advancing socio-political transformation through protecting, respecting and realizing fundamental human rights. [See module 2. Theoretical Frameworks]

In practice, participation is far from straightforward and key tensions need to be considered when developing and implementing participatory approaches. In urban contexts, the challenges of defining ‘community’, understanding scale, and tackling institutional complexity are more significant than in rural areas. (Cage and Okello, 2020). The label ‘community’ is commonly used to refer to informal settlement neighbourhoods and their residents. However, these neighbourhoods are often highly diverse, and are seldom socially homogeneous, or free from conflict and socioeconomic discord. Therefore, how participatory processes account for social diversity, power asymmetries and avoid homogenizing participants’ capabilities, needs and priorities is a key challenge. (Apsan Frediani, 2016) Likewise, working in cities requires the participation of a broad range of stakeholders, including municipal authorities, utility providers, landowners or custodians, the private sector, central government departments, and others. [See module 13. Partnerships] Participation, therefore, becomes much more than communitylevel action. These tensions are too often underestimated by practitioners, and frequently compounded by short timelines and a drive for project-based outputs. (Cooke and Kothari, 2001).

The Role of the Built Environment Professional

Tovivich describes three potential roles for built environment professionals who are working ‘for’ and ‘with’ urban poor communities. These are: provider, supporter and catalyst, where a “provider designs basic structure; a supporter enables spontaneous emergence; and a catalyst encourages small changes which can be scaled up”. (Tovivich, 2009) Alongside rethinking their own role as a built environment professional, Hamdi suggests that a shift in thinking from working with the ‘community’ to engaging ‘stakeholders’ is key. (Hamdi, 2009) [See module 10. Ethics in Built Environment Practice]

A key message of Arnstein and others is that meaningful participation involves a significant step further than consultation and requires transparency and a willingness to engage. In the case of a built environment professional, he/she does not need to abandon the skills they have, but must consider how to use them as a servant or interpreter. This can transform the expertise of built environment disciplines from a private skill into “a social resource”, opening up the rights of people “to make high demands of it”. (Oliver, 2005) The role of the built-environment professional must shift from that of a provider to a supporter or catalyst, in order to facilitate inclusive building processes in places of rapid change and scarce resources.

Moving Beyond Community Participation

Nearly 50 years after it was published, Arnstein’s ladder remains useful for critiquing the underlying motives and ambitions of participatory processes. Project-based, community-level participation alone is still not enough to achieve structural change in the lives of the urban poor and marginalized in developing countries. Experience has shown the need for participation at multiple levels and spatial scales, in an integrated manner, aligned with reformed institutional systems, and which challenges the status quo of power dynamics shaping cities. Parnell and Pieterse argue that “a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve this development action will be needed on a series of different scales … individual, household, neighbourhood and more macroenvironmental scale”. (Parnell and Pieterse, 2010)

ASF-UK’s Change by Design programme has explored these issues in practice in a variety of contexts over the past decade. The programme is premised on the belief that if participatory processes are to bring about meaningful change, practitioners should not only focus on mechanisms of community-level decision making; they should also expand communities’ presence in spaces of negotiation, and their capabilities to claim their rights and to contribute to urban development processes as legitimate partners. Participatory processes should not only be concerned with tools and methods of providing localised technical fixes to the symptoms of urban poverty and exclusion, but rather reveal and tackle processes related to unequal power dynamics, multiple identities, and the reformation of institutions that can facilitate democratic processes and the advancement of just cities. (Frediani, 2016) [See module 15. Participatory Design Tools].