Overview
Public participation in urban development has been politically demanded and promoted for decades. The aim is to maintain sustainable planning and design processes, enhance democratic structures and prevent potential conflicts. Research on this complex shows both the advantages and strengths of participatory processes as well as the challenges. What is striking about the current state of research is that the practices and views of participants are less frequently investigated in relation to institutional logics and perspectives. It is also noticeable that when the perspectives of the subject/people on participation is recorded, a dichotomous approach is taken. Either the logic of “participation as a program” (Munsch/Müller 2021a) is focused on, i.e. organized and orchestrated forms of participation that make use of methodological instruments to promote participation. Or “participation from below” (van Rießen/Knopp 2015) is researched, i.e. non-formally organized, low-threshold, sometimes resistant practices.
This is where we build on and take three existing area developments as a starting point. Conceptually, the project is framed by a subject-oriented research approach (i.e. the focus is on the participants) as well as perspectives on everyday life and democracy theory. The overarching goals are
(a) to analyze the empirical range of participation practices and perspectives
(b) to be able to make differentiated statements about the relationships between the two logics of participation (as “program” and “from below”) and thereby identify its specific
(c) patterns of participation in urban development - the latter understood in the broadest sense of city-making and not only as a formalized planning process – will be outworked
We pursue these goals by means of a qualitative-ethnographic research design. We are looking for answers to the question of how people participate in the context of urban development in the broadest sense and what perspectives they have on their participation. To this end, we observe on site, conduct interviews and collect further visual data. The project contributes to the social and scientific discourse on lived and experienced participation. We further contribute to the deeper sharpening of the concept of participation, enrich the approach of ethnographic participation research through the subject-oriented research approach and make it interdisciplinary connectable. The results also provide a central basis for actors with application-related interests in this field, such as socioculture, social work, planning offices, politics, urban and spatial development or civil society groups.
