Institute of Urban and Regional Development

The combination of the evident failure of traditional methods of citizen participation, according to almost any criterion, and the emergence of new collaborative methods involving interests and citizens has led the authors to try to develop a new paradigm for citizen participation -- one that both will work better and better correspond to the realities of contemporary times and to the emerging practices. The authors have sought in this report to outline the obstacles to change, to delineate the characteristics and practices of collaborative planning, and to develop theory to help understand and advance this mode of citizen participation. They are ultimately making the case that such participatory methods can help to build deliberative democracy and civil society and, in doing so, help us to achieve all the objectives that have been laid out for citizen participation.