Topic pack on participatory planning: making participatory planning in local governance happen

This topic pack is a resource for practitioners, students and theorists of participatory planning, and provides an introduction to the literature and contemporary thinking on this theme. It is divided into four sections: Section One discusses ideas about citizenship, participation, and governance. It traces the development of these concepts and finds that the links between citizen participation and good governance are growing stronger. Section Two looks at citizen participation in local governance planning. It reviews the context of decentralisation, and looks at planning as a 'negotiated social process' (de Roux 1998), in which citizens and local government can interact and build partnerships, though with obstacles and costs particularly for citizens. The third section 'Making participatory planning happen' deals with the practicalities of who participates, and how capacity for participation can be built, both institutional (responsiveness, transparency) and citizen (knowledge, action). It looks at methods for building such capacity, and what citizens need to know in order to engage successfully in local governance planning processes. This point is illustrated by the case of the implementation of the Philippine Local Government Code. The fourth section contains references and resources, in the form of an annotated bibliography with details of how to access materials.