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I takt med Sveriges ökande befolkningsmängd tillkommer krav på att kommunen ska kunna planera städer som lämpar sig till befolkningen utifrån fundamentala men även personliga behov. Kommunerna är de som genom planbesked meddelar om de tänker påbörja planläggning. I detaljplaneprocessen syftar samrådet bland annat till att bidra med bra beslutsunderlag men förekommer i processen först efter att ställningstaganden och beslutsfattande moment redan har skett från kommunens håll. Syftet med denna studie är att med hjälp av kvalitativ undersökning ta reda på hur Sveriges, till invånarantal, största kommuner arbetar med dialoger i tidiga skeden av detaljplaneprocessen. För att uppnå studiens syfte formuleras och ställs semistrukturerade intervjufrågor till de deltagande respondenterna. En litteraturstudie kring medborgardeltagande, inflytande och dialog har även genomförts i syfte att ge studien ett teoretiskt angreppssätt. Litteraturstudien har visat att för att bäst uppnå kvalitativa och resultatgivande medborgardialoger krävs både strategier och metoder. Beroende på sakfråga finns det vissa strategier, metoder och/eller styrverktyg som lämpar sig bättre än andra. Resultaten från intervjuerna visar på att de utvalda kommunerna enligt respondenterna anser sig arbeta med dialoger i tidiga skeden men att det saknas både en tydlig metodik kring hur dialogerna genomförs och en brist på implementering av resultaten från dialogerna. Samtidigt finns en medvetenhet bland respondenterna kring fördelarna med att föra dialoger i tidiga skeden och stora utvecklingsmöjligheter för samtliga kommuner som undersökts. / In line with Sweden's increasing population, there is a requirement that the municipality is able to plan cities suitable for the population based on fundamental as well as personal needs. The municipalities are the ones who, through planning notifications, announce if they intend to start planning or not. In the detailed development plan the consultation in planning aims, among other things, to contribute with a good decision-making basis. However the consultation occurs only after decisions have been made from the municipality's point of view. The purpose of this study is to use qualitative research to find out how Sweden's largest municipalities work with dialogues in the early stages of the detailed development planning process. In order to achieve the purpose of the study, semi-structured interview questions are formulated and asked to the participating respondents. A literature study on citizen participation, influence and dialogue has also been carried out with the aim of giving the study a theoretical approach. The literature study has shown that in order to best achieve qualitative and rewarding citizen dialogues, both strategies and methods are required. Depending on the subject matter there are certain strategies, methods and/or tools that are better suited than others. The results of the interviews show that according to the respondents, the selected municipalities consider themselves to be working with dialogues in the early stages, but that there is a lack of both a clear methodology regarding how the dialogues are carried out and a lack of implementation of the results of the dialogues. At the same time, there is an awareness among respondents about the benefits of dialogues in the early stages and furthermore great development opportunities for all municipalities that participated in the study.

No / Adaptive Water Management (AWM) could provide a sustainable route to address the existing complex problems of urban water management such as continued water shortage and flooding through the future. The AWM application could be a new alternative path in water management especially in developing countries which suffer from common weakening features such as unreliable infrastructure and poor institutional organisations. The AWM distinguishing characteristics such as polycentric governance, organisational flexibility and public participation are considered for feasibility study of the AWM implementation. The paper investigates whether AWM could be applied to a developing-country city in order to deal with future uncertainties of water supply/demand. The required data was collected from the water professionals of Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company (TPWW Company), which is in charge of water supply and management of 12 million people of the Province. The key elements of AWM performance are transformed to a multi criteria decision model of Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) in order to facilitate quantification of the influence of corresponding qualitative elements derived from semi-structured interviews held in the Company, and for further analysis of urban water managers' views in a structured way. The research findings show that despite the lack of structural adaptability there are positive attitudes towards inter departmental communication and linking to the external decisive actors such as the Company's consumers. As a generalising result, the AWM concept would be applicable to the similar developing-country cities particularly located in the Middle-East region while simultaneously promoting technical and institutional performances.

Historical accounts depict NASA's interactions with American citizens beyond government agencies and aerospace firms since the 1950s and 1960s as efforts to 'sell' its human space flight initiatives and to position external publics as would-be observers, consumers, and supporters of such activities. Characterizing citizens solely as celebrants of NASA's successes, however, masks the myriad publics, engagement modes, and influences that comprised NASA's efforts to forge connections between human space flight and citizens after Apollo 11 culminated. While corroborating the premise that NASA constantly seeks public and political approval for its costly human space programs, I argue that maintaining legitimacy in light of shifting social attitudes, political priorities, and divided interest in space flight required NASA to reconsider how to serve and engage external publics vis-à-vis its next major human space program, the Space Shuttle. Adopting a sociotechnical imaginary featuring the Shuttle as a versatile technology that promised something for everyone, NASA sought to engage citizens with the Shuttle in ways appealing to their varied, expressed interests and became dependent on some publics' direct involvement to render the vehicle viable economically, socially, and politically. NASA's ability and willingness to democratize the Shuttle proved difficult to sustain, however, as concerns evolved following the Challenger accident among NASA personnel, political officials, and external publics about the Shuttle's purpose, value, safety, and propriety. Mapping the publics and engagement modes NASA regarded as crucial to the Shuttle's legitimacy, this case study exposes the visions of public accountability and other influences -- including changing perceptions of a technology -- that can govern how technoscientific institutions perceive and engage various external publics. Doing so illuminates the prospects and challenges associated with democratizing decisions and uses for space and, perhaps, other technologies managed by U.S. government agencies while suggesting a new pathway for scholarly inquiry regarding interactions between technoscientific institutions and external publics. Expanding NASA's historical narrative, this study demonstrates that entities not typically recognized as space program contributors played significant roles in shaping the Shuttle program, substantively and culturally. Conceptualizing and valuing external publics in these ways may prove key for NASA to sustain human space flight going forward. / Ph. D.

This dissertation presents the case for a normative vision of the relationship between technical experts and other non-expert members of a democratic citizenry. This vision is grounded in two key insights that have emerged from the field of science and technology studies. First, is the "third wave" science studies movement that identifies problems of expertise as the "pressing intellectual problem of the age." Characterized by the problems of legitimacy and extension, Collins and Evans build the case for the extension of the category of expertise to include those who have the relevant experience but lack relevant accreditation. Alongside this extension of the category of expertise is the extension of those who participate in the framing of techno-scientific issues. This dissertation builds a case for the inclusion of all democratic citizens in the problem framing process. What we are left with from the current "third wave" literature is a multi-tiered prescription for the role of non-experts in public decision-making about science and technology. On the ground floor, when the issue is being framed there is a need to include non-expert stakeholders (in theory, any concerned democratic citizen). Once a framing of the problem has been constructed, there is a need to recognize a larger category of people who count as "expert." Together, these constitute the two most powerful prescriptive elements of expertise developed in the recent science studies literature. The dissertation then explores claims that it is specifically "deliberative" theories of democracy that are best suited to make sense out of this democratization of expertise. After presenting a typology of deliberative theories of democracy that clears up a serious problem of equivocation found in appeals to deliberative democracy in current STS literature, this dissertation argues that only a specific set of deliberative theories of democracy, "discursive" deliberative theories of democracy, are capable of fulfilling the role theories of deliberative democracy are assigned in current STS literature. The dissertation then goes on to suggest how these new insights into the democratization of expertise might affect future instantiations of technology assessment mechanisms (such as the office of Technology Assessment) in the U.S. / Ph. D.

This dissertation explores multiple stakeholders' perceptions with regard to administrative rules governing public participation in the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) in Virginia. In 2007, the HRTPO received conditional certification during its quadrennial review with seven corrective actions related to public participation. Subsequently, it started to reform its public participation practices, and in 2012 it received full certification. This study explores how the HRTPO stakeholders perceive the administrative rules that govern public participation processes, more positively (as 'green tape') or more negatively (as 'red tape'), and how those perceptions have changed since 2007, relying on in-depth interviews as well as archival documents. Before 2007, top management officials had pessimistic perceptions of public participation in general and the rules in particular. The negative perceptions changed when new senior staff arrived in 2008 and initiated reforms, most notably by hiring a public involvement administrator. Acting as a transformative leader, this administrator began to adopt outreach programs, which stakeholders considered successful. By unpacking the notion of stakeholder red tape, guided by the attributes of stakeholder red tape and green tape, this study found that stakeholders perceived the rules more positively than they did in 2007. / Ph. D.

The central issue of this study revolves around public participation in the making and implementation of policy in Mauritius, particularly at the Port Louis’ local government. Public participation is regarded as one of the milestones of democracy and local governance. Local government provides an ideal forum for allowing participatory democracy to flourish as it is closest to the inhabitants. The question of what are the levels of public participation in the making and implementation of policy in Mauritius with reference to the Port Louis’ local government formed the core element of the problem statement of the thesis. Following this, the hypothesis is stated. Attention is devoted on the four objectives of the research questions: What are the key concepts that relate to public participation in the making and implementation of policy at local government level; what impact does the Constitution of the Republic of Mauritius Amendment, 2003 (Act 124 of 2003) and the New Local Government Act, 2005 (Act 23 of 2005) have on public participation in the making and implementation of policy in Mauritius, particularly at the Port Louis’ local government and what modes of public participation are used in the making and implementation of policy at the Port Louis’ local government; and what are the main factors that influence public participation in the making and implementation of policy at the Port Louis’ local government? Within the thesis, the research findings obtained from the questionnaire; and the interviews are analysed and interpreted. Ultimately, in view of the arguments presented in this thesis an attempt was made to provide some recommendations on public participation in the making and implementation of policy in Mauritius, particularly at the Port Louis’ local government. / Public Administration / D.P.A)

A presente pesquisa propôs o desenvolvimento e a aplicação de um web-GIS interativo alimentado por usuários visando ao mapeamento do risco de inundações por meio da coleta de dados de ameaça, exposição e vulnerabilidade percebidos pela população. Foi também estimado o risco de inundação a partir de uma expressão de indicadores propostos por Mendiondo (2008). As duas metodologias foram aplicadas em sub-bacias urbanas da cidade de São Carlos. Foram realizadas entrevistas com a população da cidade para coletar dados de percepção de risco, enquanto se desenvolvia o web-GIS, para o qual, uma vez terminado, foram transferidos os referidos dados online. O portal se mostrou uma ferramenta de uso simples e confiável. As estimativas de risco calculadas por meio da expressão citada levaram a concluir que as sub-bacias com maior risco de inundação são as dos córregos Tijuco Preto e Medeiros. Entretanto, o risco estimado a partir da análise de percepção evidenciou as sub-bacias Gregório e Santa Maria Madalena como as de maior risco de inundação. As duas ferramentas apresentaram-se valiosas e econômicas para estimativa de risco de inundação em ambiente urbano, podendo constituir ótimos sistemas de apoio à decisão. O webGIS, em particular, é potencialmente útil para informar aos moradores sobre quais são as áreas de risco de inundação na cidade. / This dissertation presents the development and application of an interactive web-GIS in which internet users map flood risk collaboratively by filling up a geotagged form with questions on flood hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Flood risk was also assessed through the use of a set of environmental risk indicators proposed by Mendiondo (2008). The two methodologies were applied to six urban watersheds of the city of São Carlos (State of São Paulo, Brazil). Interviews including questions asked on the web-GIS were carried out in city streets while the portal was being developed. Thus perceived risk data gathered from the interviews was later transferred online onto the web-GIS. The web-GIS proved to be an easy to use and intuitive tool. According to the results of risk calculation obtained with the indicators expression the watersheds with higher flood risk were the Tijuco Preto and Medeiros, which were also the ones with smallest area and higher population density. The results of perceived risk, which was assessed through the analysis of the interviews data, gave evidence that Gregorio and Santa Maria Madalena where the watersheds at higher risk. These watersheds are the two which experience a higher rate of occurrence on a year basis. The two approaches for assessing risk proved to be consistent and relatively inexpensive for the estimate of flood risk in urban areas, with the potential of representing valid decision support systems. The webGIS is a particularly interesting solution as a medium of information to inhabitants on the level of risk to which they are exposed.