Participatory Research and Planning in Practice

In the current context of rapid and profound social and environmental changes, including the crisis and the emergent uncertainty and risks of climate change for urban settings, sustainability debates are increasingly focusing on the relationship between democracy, development and innovation. Within these debates, the approach of “co-creation” is becoming a key concept at the European policy level since it involves participatory governance and bottom-up innovation for development. Co-creation mainly refers to the active engagement of citizens with other societal actors (i.e.,public and private sectors) in sharing information, knowledge, ideas and experiences to collaboratively construct and transform sustainable settings. It is an approach to participatory action research, having its origin in co-inquiry, in which researchers are facilitators of the participatory process rather than intellectual leaders of there search (Heron and Reason1997). By relying on such active engagement approach when designing and planning urban spaces and communities to face climate change challenges, it is expected to build more democratic, inclusive and resilient cities(Lemos and Morehouse2005;Revietal.2014).Interestingly, in the adaptation literature, the concept of “co-production” has become more popular than the term “co-creation” (Wamsler2016). Both concepts refer to participatory or collaborative governance, but differ in its origins and in the nature of the actors involved. Different from co-creation that comes from business science and involves public–private partnership, co-production has its origins in the literature on urban planning, sustainability and science and technology studies. Moreover, co-production basically refers to government, researchers and community actors, although market and third sector actors might also be engaged since this approach recognizes the relevance of having a diversity of societal actors involved in the planning and decision-making process (Van Kerkh off and Lebel2015; Wamsler2016,2017; Muñoz-Erickson et al.2017). Since the focus of this chapter is climate change adaptation planning and urban resilience, I use the term co-production from now on although some evidence and arguments presented can also be applied toco-creation processes broadly understood. This chapter critically explores how citizens’ participation is being discursively used and applied in urban resilience and planning for climate change adaptation. It also reflects on how power dynamics can shape resilience and adaptation measures in urban settings, which is critical to provide a nuanced understanding of the potential and limitations of citizens’ engagement in climate change adaptation planning and management.

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https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/22965