Public Involvement: The Challenges of Difference

This article focuses on how to give “voice” to diversity. A politics of difference sometimes requires a different treatment for oppressed or disadvantaged groups as they are facing significant structural barriers to full participation in their community. This implies that difference is used as a category of analysis in planning theory, in plan-making, formal decision-making and implementation. Using case studies, an international Delphi and personal experience in a number of planning processes the paper reflects on criteria for differentiation—historic context, power relations, time, scale levels, nature and complexity of the issues and the social position of citizens and groups—and on an approach open to the dilemmas of difference and how such an approach could be put into practice. Within this approach specific conditions take shape through target groups and workable conditions are provided for the effective involvement of marginali zed and excluded groups.

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