Since President-Elect Barack Obama’s election last week news has been flying fast. Here’s a few items that caught my eye. Obama quickly launched an official transition website, appropriately called Change.gov. Featuring a blog and an invitation for users to submit their vision about what “America can be” and “where President-Elect Obama should lead this country.” […]
Report Finds Public Participation Improves Policy
A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded public participation processes can improve the quality of policies and help them become implemented. The 270-page report is the product of a research panel of a dozen experts. The report’s primary recommendation urges “Public participation should be fully incorporated into environmental assessment and […]
NIMBYism, Urban Development, and the Public Involvement Solution
NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) activists are one of the most important and least understood issues in contemporary American urban planning. A recent national survey found that roughly one-quarter of all Americans reported they or someone in their family has actively opposed a development project. Although opposition to development is widespread and use of […]
Public Participation Theory
This post is Part 3 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning. The urban planning profession has developed increasingly sophisticated techniques and theories regarding how and why to involve citizens in planning processes, especially since the 1960s. Critics pilloried […]
A Brief History of Public Participation in Urban Planning
This post is Part 2 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning. In order to describe the potential uses of the Internet in public participation in planning, this section will begin with a short history of public participation in […]
The Wrong Way the Solicit Participation on the Web
I noticed two flawed attempts to solicit public participation on the web recently. First, on Tuesday Hillary Clinton said the following during her nationally televised speech: “Now the question is, where do we go from here … But this has always been your campaign, so to the 18 million people who voted for me and […]
June is Public Participation in Urban Planning Month
Although there may be no such thing as “Public Participation in Urban Planning Month” that I know of, I’ve decided to declare one on this website at least. That’s because I’ve decided to use June to publish a series of posts describing the research and recommendations contained in my final paper for graduate school, titled […]