Governance and participation processes

Introduction to governance and participation processes

General introduction to approach

Governance and participation processes go hand in hand in this cluster of approaches. At the heart is engaging diverse participants in collective efforts to build and/or share knowledge, transform roles and integrate understandings in order to engage actively in problemsolving with the intention of building “strategic partnerships” (URBAN-NEXUS) or social innovation (e.g., ITSSOIN) with varied sustainability goals including “reducing ecological urban footprints” (e.g., URBAN-NEXUS), creating “sustainability transitions” (e.g., INCONTEXT), or catalysing and mainstreaming “carbon and energy reduction in urban policies, activities and the built environment” (e.g., MUSIC). Traditional governance structures are challenged by an emphasis on convening diverse participants such as researchers and policymakers and bringing together community members or considering, for example, social innovation in the third sector. Many of the forums consider bottom-up approaches and grassroots participation critical to the participatory processes.

Shapes, sizes and applications

While the approaches can vary, they assert a fundamental commitment to convening participants that might otherwise lack opportunities, for example, to build and share knowledge and perspectives in an effort to address the challenges of promoting sustainability. Knowledge is co-constructed through such approaches as action research, learning spiral approach, community arenas and dialogue cafes. Concrete problemsolving efforts are manifested through approaches including applied transition management, self-organization. New participation processes are explored through research on social innovation and civic engagement in the third sector and applying “out of town hall” approaches and public participation for green space development. Governance and participation approaches tend to span national to local scales including neighborhoods, with more local processes including place-based and “out of town hall” approaches. While most are bottom up types of approaches, some are both such as mixed logic analysis in which dialogue is centered around wider research initiated data sets. Some successes were noted particularly with participation processes in the latter stages of projects (e.g., URBANSELF), SEiSMiC “success depends on agreement among partners concerning decision-making”. INCONTEXT provided lessons learned that promote success such as “Shared visions can drive change --even in diverse groups.” A challenge for URBANSELF was noted, “The diversity and sheer number of different stakeholders of sustainable urban development also create difficulties in getting a complete set of stakeholders in our network. To set up a meeting where all people have a connection with the topic discussed and having all stakeholders present is a difficult task. Creating long-term partnerships is something that definitely does not happen overnight” Other projects, such as MUSIC aimed at carbon and energy reduction, revealed that limited time, lack of coordination across governmental institutions, and a short-term perspective pose challenges to sustainability initiatives (see Wesely, Julia & Feiner, Georg & Omann, Ines & Schäpke, Niko. (2013). Transition management as an approach to deal with climate change).

Relation to UrbanA themes: Cities, sustainability, and justice

The approaches in this cluster may not all have an urban focus, the scales do tend to be localized. Justice is largely asserted in the form of assuring diverse participation, which can be challenging in terms of identifying participants and assuring their commitment. However, most of the approaches include some aspect of environmental sustainability such as reducing carbon emissions or ecological footprints at different scales, particularly at the local or national levels. Governance and participation processes convened around these issues combined with a commitment to diverse participation connect sustainability and justice (particularly, procedural justice emphasizing recognition with implications for distribution). The civic-based participatory nature of self-organization (particularly in contradistinction to top-down and techno-expertise approaches), for example, points to procedural and recognition-based justice at the local scale through civic engagement and contribution to decisionmaking. GREENSPACE, involving extensive and diverse data collection and distribution for reflection across communities (e.g., Choice experimental approach in Dublin, ecological mapping in Stuttgart), noted that, the “Brighton & Hove” case study “demonstrated the potential for long-term sustainable deliberation and how a group can be supported to uphold inclusively, equity and fairness.”

Narrative of change

The main issues that this cluster of approaches addresses is inclusivity -the need for wider and more diverse engagement- in generating knowledge and understanding and garnering important perspectives in asserting solutions to sustainability challenges. The approaches attempt to provide forums that not only engage a diverse set of participants, some of which emphasize including disadvantaged groups or individuals, but provide a process by which they can establish common or collective understandings and solutions.

Transformative potential

The transformative potential of this cluster of approaches is in the structured interactive dynamics across diverse actors. Hence, they provide a platform to include different perspectives that are ultimately brought to bear upon the various contextualized challenges faced across communities, policymakers, and researchers. Diverse and wide inclusion of actors and stakeholders and an attempt to redress a predominance of top-down approaches transform the power dynamics that limit the potential for inclusive governance and participation processes that bridge knowledge and understandings toward the promotion of sustainability. ITSSOIN, a research project on the third sector and social innovation, concluded that, “ the state alone does not seem to be capable of promoting the social innovation, but that cross-sector collaboration has to come in.”

Summary of relevant approaches

Co-creation is about bringing together different people (e.g., researchers, policymakers, residents and artists) to co-create understanding and, in the case of H2020 CO-CREATION project, to address disadvantage in particular. The methodology based on the H2020 CO-CREATION is not yet developed and will be project specific. However, generally co-creation refers to the collaborative construction of understandings across different actor perspectives in order to assert a common foundation in which parties are equal (with equal resources), speak the same language and have shared vision/goals. CO-CREATION is in progress and in 2019, case studies involving the application of the developed co-creation methodology will be launched by bringing together diverse participants (e.g., residents, artists) to “co-create knowledge and understanding” in neighborhoods in seven cities including Oxford, Bath/Bristol, Berlin, Brussels, Paris, Rio, and Mexico City.

URBANSELF emphasizes research on self-organization initiatives that engage citizens’ expertise, experiences and perspectives in urban sustainability by exchanging knowledge and solutions to address urban challenges. Self-organization can emphasize citizen-based initiatives at the community and/or local levels and yet also be considered for a comparative basis across urban settings and initiatives. This approach assumes that active engagement of citizen inhabitants is fundamental to success. Self-organization is in contradistinction to exclusionary (particularly, based on “power relations, valorisation of knowledge and expertise”) and highly technical approaches to sustainability (e.g., criteria) and top-down approaches administered by the state (e.g., Chennai, India and top-down measures as in Kunming, China) and asserts the transformation of inhabitants into active citizens (constituting “real participation” vs. virtual) engaging their own approaches to urban sustainability. It is generally considered an “actor-centred approach emphasising local knowledge, communication and survival strategies instead of technical expertise as the main forces driving urban development”. Examples of self-organization were explored in cities in Europe, China, India, the UK, and others. The slums studied in India included some of the most effective examples of self-organization.

References

https://cordis.europa.eu/docs/results/268/268931/final1-final_publishable_report_urbanself.pdf https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/reporting/en https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/99659/factsheet/en) https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/100669/reporting/en https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/53077/results/en