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Lost or Found? Translating Innovative Participation

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Abstract

Many new and innovative forms of participation in public planning and strategy development have emerged, and they are often informal and sometimes also expressive. However, public planning is a formal activity that is largely based on written documents. The analysis presented in this chapter is based on the case study of a strategy process in a medium-sized Norwegian town. It shows that the written translation of input is limited and that important aspects for decision-making are not included. This supports the conclusion that the impressions and memories of politicians and administrators who participate in such processes should be emphasised. The analysis also suggests that these impressions and memories provide important information for assessing the impact that the innovative arenas can have on strategy decisions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An exact number of participating politicians was not possible to obtain.

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Correspondence to Toril Ringholm .

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Appendix: Interview Guide

Appendix: Interview Guide

  1. 1.

    What are your experiences with the ByLab process?

  2. 2.

    What experiences are conveyed to you from others who participated in other parts of the process than yourself?

  3. 3.

    Is this way of designing participation useful for the planning and development work in the municipality?

  4. 4.

    Do you think the presentation of the process and the experiences from it, as it appears in the documents, are in accordance with your impressions from participating in the process?

  5. 5.

    Was the discussion in the local council different from discussions that you have experience from, regarding other planning contexts? If so, in what way?

  6. 6.

    Do you see any limitations or disadvantages with these forms of participation?

  7. 7.

    Do you have thoughts or ideas of other, new forms of participation?

  8. 8.

    Concluding remarks.

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Ringholm, T. (2020). Lost or Found? Translating Innovative Participation. In: Hagen, A., Higdem, U. (eds) Innovation in Public Planning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46136-2_10

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