Towards Systematic Integration of Participatory Knowledge in Land-use Planning Practice

Participatory planning practices have been developed to gather local, experiential knowledge and feedback for planning, and widely studied for their ability to foster collaboration between planners and stakeholders and to cultivate consensus and legitimacy for planning decisions. However, the systematic and transparent integration of knowledge gathered through participation into planning practice and municipal governance networks remains rare, and participants and stakeholders are left to wonder how their involvement shaped planning outcomes. Planning occurs at the interface of knowledge and action, and knowing is socially constructed, situated and distributed. Thus, effective, context-sensitive, and just land-use planning requires systematic harnessing of vast knowledge embedded in local communities. Planners and planning organizations are expected to co-produce knowledge with a variety of stakeholders affected by the outcomes. This compilation dissertation based on five articles examines the integration and use of participatory citizen knowledge in planning practice and decision-making. The mixed methods studies approach participatory knowledge from the perspective of planners and planning organizations, politicians, and participants’ spatial relationships. The articles study participatory knowledge both more generally and with the specific lens of knowledge gathered through Public Participation GIS (PPGIS). This dissertation studies the practices and perceptions that frame how planners and decision-makers collect, share, utilize and communicate citizen knowledge. The studies shed light on how the practices could be developed based on planners’, politicians’, and citizens’ experiences from participatory processes, and analyze underlying reasons for the implementation gap between theory and practice. Solutions for more systematic integration of participatory knowledge are developed and tested with practitioners. The findings are synthesized in the context of planning theory, complemented by theories of knowledge management and power structures in public organizations. The dissertation provides the following central findings. First, the key challenge for systematic participatory knowledge integration is making tacit knowledge explicit. Mobilizing diverse knowledges from diverse stakeholders to inform planning practice will remain a subject of continuous renegotiation of power and epistemic authority. PPGIS can contribute with large-scale, distributed mapping of experiential local knowledge at the initiation of planning processes, ideally to be used as a foundation which can be deepened by case-specific participation. Second, the development of systematic participatory knowledge integration requires localized, context-sensitive and iterative development which promotes individual planners’ and other knowledge users’ agency and mutual organizational learning. It should aim to increase trust between stakeholders. Finally, the conditions for systematic integration and use of participatory knowledge include providing accessible technical knowledge sharing infrastructure; sufficient organizational and individual capabilities; organizational culture where the value of participatory knowledge is recognized by leadership; and finally, agency for action and development for the better use of participatory knowledge in planning processes. These conditions can to some extent be complemented by network capabilities, but only development which leads to independence from the network actors’ contributions can facilitate sustainable knowledge integration and utilization practices over time.