In the last few years, the City of Dallas has witnessed a substantial increase in the level of citizen participation in land-use decisions. A little known provision of the Texas Civil Statutes allows cities to divide their town into 'Neighborhood Zoning Areas' to provide another method for citizen review of zoning applications. The purpose of this thesis is to examine present methods for soliciting citizen comments, examine the quality of land-use decisions and to determine successes and failures 'Neighborhood Councils' have had in three other cities.The literature concerning present neighborhood involvement in the zoning appeals process is sketchy and somewhat contradictory. Therefore, the experience of Portland, Oregon; Dayton, Ohio; and Washington, D.C. was analyzed to determine how well subordinate governmental units function in other cities. The information received in the case studies was limited due to several factors, but all three city staffs gave hearty endorsement to their particular systems. No negative consequences of using this particular system was noted.A review of Plan Commission voting records revealed that the quality of land-use decisions made through the zoning appeals process needs to be improved.Citizen attitudes were examined to determine whether a neighborhood advisory council would increase citizen input or merely interject an anti-development bias into the zoning appeals process. Three neighborhood representatives were interviewed and all demonstrated that they were capable of negotiating and possessed a good perspective of neighborhood planning issues. Creation of neighborhood advisory councils would possibly correct the existing imbalance between developer interests and neighborhood interests.Whether neighborhood advisory councils will ever be initiated in Dallas is difficult to predict. One recent City Council recommendation directed the staff to explore ways to encourage negotiations between neighborhoods and developers. A proposal to form neighborhood advisory councils could grow out of this recommendation. / Department of Urban Planning

The process by which ideas, designs, and plans are formulated has an influence on whether or not they will be implemented. Consensus-based planning is a tool which is being incorporated more and more in planning efforts in order to create broad-based goals and objectives. However, many times it is used in the comprehensive planning process where it is more difficult to gauge the amount of implementation being done. There is a large amount of information on how consensus-based planning creates stronger decisions, goals, etc. based in the public interest but there is little information on how these decisions or goals impacted their communities. The study looks at obstacles to implementation and what would have helped to eliminate them. It also questions whether, if consensus-building techniques had been used during the planning process, it would have helped to eliminate these obstacles to implementation. In order to answer these questions, three charrettes conducted by Community Based Projects of Ball State University in the years between 1990 and 1992 are evaluated. / Department of Urban Planning

Efforts by designers to produce solutions to environmental problems has become increasingly sophisticated. Inter-disciplinary teams of designers, engineers and scientists have proposed new and dynamic resolutions to environmental disturbances. There is a problem, however, in the ability of such proposals to be accepted and implemented.This study investigated the possibility that communication of these plans has been responsible for the lack of acceptance. Citizens and governmental officials must adequately comprehend the proposed solutions before they can gain confidence and judge them worthy of implementation. This study searched for aspects of communication necessary to successfully promote pre-planning and reclamation for correcting and preventing environmental problems in sanitary landfills.A random survey of Delaware County, Indiana established base means for concerns (aesthetic, pollution, property value, safety, etc.) in a typical population cross-section. The net effectiveness of the landfill presentation (communication) effort was to be inferred through noted changes in the level of concern between the typical population and the test group who witnessed the educational presentation.The comparative test could not proceed. The focus of this study was then directed towards more intimate analysis of the attitudinal data provided in the cross-sectional survey. A number of obvious and obvious characteristics were revealed.In the end, this study has provided significant insight into the "posture" of the most important link in convincing that planning and design solutions can mitigate environmental problems. That link is at the receiving end of such communication efforts... the "public" with its constructs of fears and biases. / Department of Landscape Architecture

No description available.

No description available.

There is an on-going debate in South Africa whether municipalities are an effective vehicle for deepening participatory democracy or not. Due to serious backlogs on services, the role of municipalities has largely been reduced to service delivery, to the detriment and total neglect of fundamental functions of local government. These are (Act 200, 1996):(a) To provide democratic and accountable government for local communities;(b) To ensure the provision of services to communities in a sustainable manner;(c) To promote social and economic development;(d) To promote a safe and healthy environment; and (e) To encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government. On the other hand Haveri, Stenvall & Majoinen (2011) argue that if the municipalities are a government sphere closest to the people, they are therefore best placed to, and should, lead and support the deepening of participatory democracy, what they call self-government. As the debate rages on, there are indications that most of thechallenges that face the municipalities are related to the distance that has been developing between municipal institutions and the citizens.

After 1994, the democratic South Africa passed a number of legislations in order to address the imbalances of the previous apartheid regime. The new South African government had a special mandate to provide appropriate services to all the citizens of the country. In 1995 the government formulated the White Paper on the Transformation of the Public Service. The aim was to transform the South African public service, which is the indication of the importance of service delivery, as the key machinery of the government to equalize service delivery to all citizens. In 1996, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa anchored the Bill of Rights as the cornerstone of democracy that enshrines the rights of all people and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom. Chapter ten of the Constitution stipulates the basic values and principles governing public administration. The South African Government has developed a wide range of legislation that ensures that communities are consulted on a continuous basis with regard to how services need to be rendered. Communities have a right to be consulted and to give input into issues affecting them. Public consultation as envisaged in the South African legislation has, however, not yielded the desired results which is evident in the spate of service delivery protests over poor or non-service delivery. Section 152(1) (e) of the constitution stipulates amongst others, promotes involvement of communities and community organisations in the matters of local government. Section 73 of the Municipal Structures Act (no.117 of 1998) also requires municipalities to establish ward committees in a manner that seeks to enhance participatory democracy at the local level. The study therefore is to check that decision-makers at the Chris Hani Municipality understand the consequences of their decisions before they act and people affected get the opportunity to participate in designing their future.

This thesis examines various approaches to public participation within rural planning. It deals with the roles rural residents, in unincorporated areas of British Columbia, can play in local planning. The thesis argues that effective planning in such areas only occurs if a rural planning approach, which considers distinctive rural characteristics, is applied to the planning process. Such planning generally requires the active involvement of rural people. To accomplish this objective a model is constructed of how rural residents participate in planning. Its theoretical framework is developed from a review of the available literature on rural planning and public participation. The model is then used to examine a specific area--Texada Island--which was selected because of its recent experiences with planning. The model identifies four main approaches to rural planning: planning 'of a rural community; planning 'for' a rural community; planning 'with' a rural community; and planning 'by' a rural community. The thesis argues that all of these approaches can meet the criteria that define rural planning, but they differ significantly on the objectives for the planning process, and the roles the local residents perform. The model also contains four categories of public participation: public information; data collection; citizenship training; and involvement in decision making. This thesis defines public participation as the means whereby the general public interact with decision makers, beyond elections, to ensure public decisions reflect their objectives. Within the context of this definition the four categories are seen as being the main avenues that rural people have for participation in planning. When the types of participation were applied to the various rural planning approaches a number of observations about the involvement of rural people in planning became apparent. These characteristics were reinforced when the Texada Islanders' experiences with planning were examined. The model and the Texada example both demonstrated that even within the constraints inherent in the various types of planning there were opportunities to enhance the level of public involvement. The author takes the position that these possible improvements are significant to the planning process since there is a positive linear correlation between increased public participation and the effectiveness of the planning process. The relationship between public involvement and planning is demonstrated through the analysis of rural planning approaches. Planning 'of' a rural, community may produce some short term results but it is incapable of providing any long term direction because the planning process is too divorced from the aspiration of the local residents who have considerable ability to frustrate external objectives even when they have little ability to take the initiative. Planning 'for' a rural community generally fails because the issues that the planning exercise is attempting to deal with are examined from the perceptions of 'outsiders'. Planning 'with' a rural community is limited because the planning process is dominated by the 'experts' who also see issues through a different set of perceptions. Planning 'by' the rural community approach is the approach that the thesis claims can succeed when the others fail. Its success is related to its correlation to rural values; its emphasis on local resources, which expands the usually limited resources available for any rural planning; and the fact that it deals with planning as part of a larger process of rural development. Rural development avoids the frequent segregation of planning and implementation and permits the planning to become an ongoing process which allows for adjustment and elaboration as required. Advocating a need for planning 'by' rural communities is not done with any naive assumptions about its success being assured. This approach can produce the most enduring results, but it also exacts the highest costs in terms of effort and its existence is dependent on a continuing commitment by the rural residents who are in control of the planning process. But this commitment is a requirement for rural development where change is achieved by the active participation of affected people. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis examines how planners negotiate urban design by examining a case study of a development project that was planned for the waterfront of Vancouver, British Columbia in the 1990s. This project, called Portside, was to be situated on land owned by the federal government, adjacent to the downtown of the City of Vancouver but not under their jurisdiction. The literatures in urban design and negotiation theory are iteratively searched to find where there is overlap between theoretical writing on related subjects and communicative or collaborative planning. Qualitative methodologies were used in researching this subject with emphasis on interviews of representatives of those parties involved in negotiations. The questions asked in the interviews mirror the progression of ideas in the theoretical underpinnings of the paper and form the framework around which the results are organized. The statements of the interview subjects form the basis of the about what works in negotiating urban design. High quality urban design is the result of a high quality design process-one that uses effective negotiation techniques and a mixed bag of practical planning tools. The theory of communicative planning acknowledges the importance of negotiation skills and multiple approaches to overcoming obstacles such as those found in the case study. The importance of visual communication skills, team cooperation, anticipation of problem areas, and flexibility within bureaucratic frameworks for planning professionals are underlined as a result of examining this development project. It is apparent that negotiating urban design happens often in Vancouver. It is also apparent that practitioners are unclear as to how they reach agreement in areas that can be subjective and unquantifiable, only that agreement is usually reached. The literature of communicative planning supplies suggestions as to how "messy" problems, such as negotiating urban design in a multi-stakeholder context, can be successfully overcome. And the techniques put forward in the theory are apparent in practice in this case. A high-quality communicative planning process, one that made good use of best negotiative practices coupled with effective design-specific communication, led to highquality urban design for this project. These methods were applied largely unconsciously by the participants as part of a mixed bag of practical planning tools. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate

This thesis explores the topic of seniors' participation in community planning. More specifically, it addresses the importance and relevance of including seniors, seniors' issues, and seniors' perspectives in community planning efforts, the circumstances under which seniors are most likely to become involved in community planning efforts, and guidelines for a practical process to encourage effective seniors' participation in developing local community plans. To address these issues, the thesis includes a review of the planning literature on public participation, a brief summary of relevant trends in gerontological literature, and an examination of the small amount of literature on seniors' participation in community planning. Two case studies in the District of North Vancouver, BC, "Seniors and the Lynn Valley Plan" and the "Seymour Local Plan Seniors' Forums," provide an example of a particular seniors' outreach process. This process is analysed for its effectiveness in including seniors, seniors' issues, and seniors' perspectives in local community plans and then factors influencing effectiveness are examined. This thesis reveals that the inclusion of seniors, seniors' issues, and seniors' perspectives engenders more accurate planning, increases acceptance of community plans, exercises democratic rights and duties, and promotes self-sufficiency and self-worth in individuals and communities. Seniors are most likely to become involved in community planning efforts when they feel included: when they feel they are fulfilling a meaningful role, when certain emotional needs are satisfied by the planning process, and when they are able to take advantage of participation opportunities, that is, when aging-related needs are taken into account in designing and implementing planning processes. The process employed in the two cases studied, with certain suggested improvements, is found to be an appropriate and effective method of including seniors, their issues, and their perspectives in community planning efforts. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Community and Regional Planning (SCARP), School of / Graduate