Citizen participation: the case of Israel Project Renewal

Project Renewal made citizen participation in decision‐making its central principle, the core of all the activities performed at the neighborhood level. This paper describes the concept of citizen participation in disadvantaged areas, how it developed in practice, its organizational changes and its new form in Project Renewal neighborhoods in Israel. In addition, it considers which factors contribute to or impede the development of citizen participation and the lessons that have been learned during its 30 years of existence. The citizen participation concept as implemented in Project Renewal indicates significant transformation changes in neighborhood rehabilitation: from the absence of both formal and informal channels of influence to the present stage when it is an integral part of a decision‐making process. The implementation of a resident participation policy enabled inhabitants in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Israel to have their voices heard and to be part of an influential neighborhood body of stakeholders working together to build and manage a sustainable community.     

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO URBAN RENEWAL: The Israeli Experience

ABSTRACT: This article examines the implementation shortcomings of Israel's Project Renewal the major social welfare and urban renewal program of the Begin governments (1977–1984). Despite a government decision to have a unified comprehensive program, the process of implementation resulted in at least three separate and independent programs. Many modern nation states, including the United States, have implemented urban renewal and social welfare policies designed to deal with spatially based social inequality. The Israeli effort shares with them the participation of several autonomous agencies. The emphasis, therefore, focuses on those factors that either facilitate or constrain the coordination of the inputs of two or more separate agencies in policy formulation and service delivery. The findings should lend themselves to a comparison of how the political institutions of different countries affect the implementation of similar policy efforts. These findings suggest that the dichotomy between unitary and federal systems explains less about the causes of shortcomings in policy implementation than do other variables Each country has its own political institutions and variables that help to explain policy implementation There is an additional lesson for public policy which this study underscores. Regardless of the formal structure of government, proposals to achieve greater coordination in the formulation and implementation of national and urban policies assume incorrectly that there is either the existing capacity or the ability to impose coordination, or that all participants wild “naturally” agree to coordinate. Reality was otherwise in the case of Project Renewal in Israel, as it was in similar programs in the United States including OEO and Model Cities     

Political Benefits Of Program Participation: The Case Of Community Crime Prevention

ABSTRACT: This article explores the effects of citizen participation in policy through a case study of the implementation of a community crime-prevention program in Chicago. Although the program was successful in soliciting and maintaining citizen involvement, it produced little in the way of hoped-for crime-prevention outcomes. However, in at least one case, residents became more involved in the political life of their neighborhood, while their community organization mobilized participants to seek responses for neighborhood problems from local political institutions. This article will examine some of the conditions under which the political benefits of program participation are likely to be enhanced. This study suggests that researchers measuring the effects of citizen participation need to define outcomes broadly, by distinguishing between programmatic and political consequences, and need to use qualitative as well as quantitative measures to detect unanticipated effects.     

From Local to Global: One Hundred Years of Neighborhood Planning

Problem: Over the past 100 years, city planners have used neighborhood planning to address a variety of vexing social problems such as community disintegration, economic marginalization, and environmental degradation. To date, there has been no comprehensive review and critique of these planning initiatives and how they have influenced the profession.

Purpose: This article traces the history of neighborhood planning in the United States to learn from past experience and to identify its contributions to the planning profession.

Methods: I review the literature on the various forms of neighborhood planning, which I define as planning initiatives that focus on altering the physical environment of one or more neighborhoods in pursuit of larger social objectives.

Results and conclusions: Each of the six forms of neighborhood planning discussed in this article has made important contributions to the planning profession. Perry's neighborhood unit formula provided planners with a template for good neighborhood design and introduced the idea that neighborhood design could affect the sense of community. Urban renewal taught the profession about the limits of physical solutions to social problems, the precious nature of neighborhood social networks and the importance of involving citizens. The community action programs created a new norm for citizen participation and showed its limits, as well as introducing truly comprehensive redevelopment planning. Community economic development showed that some planning and implementation activities can be successfully delegated to community-based organizations. Municipal neighborhood planning provided a mechanism for ongoing citizen involvement. The most recent forms of neighborhood planning create neighborhoods that encourage walking, use of mass transit, social interaction, and a sense of community.

Takeaway for practice: Neighborhood planning programs have made a number of important contributions to the planning profession, including focusing attention on how neighborhood design influences urban livability and social behaviors, institutionalizing citizen participation in plan making, and going beyond physical development to address social, economic, political, and environmental issues. Neighborhood planning is currently more important than ever, as it now addresses global issues such as energy conservation and greenhouse gas emissions in addition to its historic focus on social equity issues such as poverty and social alienation.

Research support: None.     

Neighborhood Rehabilitation Without Relocation or Gentrification

Project Renewal, Israel's program for social and physical rehabilitation of distressed neighborhoods, is based on lessons from American experience with neighborhood programs in general and with the Model Cities program in particular. A five-year evaluation found that the project has helped to improve living conditions of residents and to prevent deterioration in its target areas, but that those improvements were not enough to overcome the low social and economic status of the neighborhoods and their populations. The major factors that led to the qualified success of Project Renewal were extensive political support, selection of “appropriate” neighborhoods, the opening of some middle class opportunities to lower income populations, and a strategy of public-individual partnership.     

THE USE OF PARTICIPATIVE MECHANISMS BY LARGE US CITIES

ABSTRACT: This paper presents an empirical examination of the mechanisms by which cities attempt to increase citizen participation in municipal government. The incidence of four types of citizen mechanisms, open government, information gathering, neighborhood environment, and coproduction, is assessed in US cities of population greater than 100,000. Patterns of citizen participation are probed and an overall ranking of cities in terms of the participative environment they foster is developed. The existence of a participative environment is found to be associated with city efforts to attract or retain middle class residents. The theoretical meaning of this relation is explored.     

Public Participation in Planning—A Multidimensional Model: The Case of Israel

Discussion of public participation has lacked a comprehensive framework. This paper presents a multidimensional model of public participation with an institutional perspective, designed to facilitate case analysis and enable systematic comparison. The model has three main dimensions: structure, process and actions. Participation structures and processes include organisation, representation, consultation and legal-administrative channels; actions include information exchange and alternative planning. A pilot application of this model framed a case study of public participation in Israel, where objections and appeals are the main channel for public involvement, giving participation an adversarial connotation. Based on the case study, proposals are made for changes to Israeli legislation, practices, and public awareness. The conclusion discusses the model's methodological, policy and practice implications.     

A study on building sustainable communities in high-rise and high-density apartments – Focused on living program

The purpose of this study is to suggest a conceptual model for sustainable communities, considering sustainable development and placemaking perspectives of community building in Korean apartment complexes. This study then verifies the validity of the model as an action plan. Based on a review of literature at home and abroad, the model was conceptualized on the structure of living programs and physical and social settings for sustainable communities in Korean apartment complexes. The living program, which connects physical and social settings, consists of four action subjects: Activation of community spaces, activation of community programs, activation of participation, and activation of ecological living and design. This model demonstrates that a living program will increase resident satisfaction and result in a sustainable community. Three subjects out of the four suggested in the living program of the model were empirically tested based on previous research data. According to the correlation analysis between living programs and residential satisfaction, when residents are satisfied with community spaces, programs, and participation in the community, overall residential satisfaction rises. Accordingly, the living program of the conceptual model plays a meaningful role in developing sustainable communities in Korean apartment complexes.     

A Ladder of Citizen Participation

The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control,” and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens’ power in determining the plan and/or program.     

A Ladder Of Citizen Participation

The heated controversy over “citizen participation,” “citizen control”, and “maximum feasible involvement of the poor,” has been waged largely in terms of exacerbated rhetoric and misleading euphemisms. To encourage a more enlightened dialogue, a typology of citizen participation is offered using examples from three federal social programs: urban renewal, anti-poverty, and Model Cities. The typology, which is designed to be provocative, is arranged in a ladder pattern with each rung corresponding to the extent of citizens' power in determining the plan and/or program.     

CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN NEGOTIATED INVESTMENT STRATEGY

Public administrators exercise professional discretion. Citizen participation is affected by this discretion in two ways. Public administrators often design programs with citizen participaiton processes, and they also implement these processes. In both cases, citizen participation may be increased or decreased depending on how programs are designed and implemented. Negotiated Investment Strategy is presented as a specific case illustrating how such program design and implementation influenced citizen participaiton. As a result of design concessions, the administrators who implemented Negotiated Investment Strategy were constrained in their ability to share information with the citizenry and from assisting citizen organizations.     

The contribution of human and social capital to building community well-being: a research agenda relating to citizen participation in local governance in Australia

This paper discusses the interrelationships between concepts such as human and social capital, community well-being, citizen participation, community capacity building and community engagement. Working from this discussion a research agenda is presented relating to citizen participation in local governance with particular emphasis on the role of local government in building human and social capital, thereby contributing to the well-being of communities.     

The contribution of human and social capital to building community well-being: a research agenda relating to citizen participation in local governance in Australia

This paper discusses the interrelationships between concepts such as human and social capital, community well-being, citizen participation, community capacity building and community engagement. Working from this discussion a research agenda is presented relating to citizen participation in local governance with particular emphasis on the role of local government in building human and social capital, thereby contributing to the well-being of communities.     

Is Public Participation Making Urban Planning More Democratic? The Israeli Experience

The article examines the alleged connection between the goal of democratization of the Israeli planning system and 'public participation in planning'. It begins by claiming that the planning system in Israel is a non-democratic environment within the democratic state. This situation has stimulated the enormous development of theoretical and practical work relating to 'public participation'. Yet, statutory and voluntary participation mechanisms in Israel have not been able to influence the decision-making structure in planning. Moreover, most public organizations and NGOs that are supposed to represent the voice of the public are far from being genuine public delegates. The article also relates to the power/knowledge problem, stating that participation processes cannot escape it. The article highlights the widely experienced tensions between the democratization of planning through more consultative and participative processes, the role of elected representatives and of civil society movements which choose co-operative rather than oppositional strategies.     

Planning Rights in Theory and Practice: The Case of Israel

Planning rights in theory means the abstract concept of planning rights (PRs): here this concept is defined and the status of real PRs–positive or potential–is explained. Real PRs are always related to a particular context; thus any discussion must be context-specific. A pilot study researched the Israeli planning system: this paper presents the resulting inventory and status of PRs in Israel. A selective review details positive and potential PRs under participation, non-discrimination, human dignity and social justice, and evaluates their effectuation in Israel, compared to some other planning systems. The conclusions summarize the pilot study's findings and recommendations, and develop its implications for research methodology, planning theory and practice.     

Citizen participation in planning: the relationship between objectives and techniques

While citizen participation has become a commonplace element in many planning efforts, both planners and citizens often assess the participatory elements as being unsatisfactory. The contention in this article is that not enough attention is being given to the design of participatory programs and that there is a particular failing in matching objectives to techniques. Five objectives of citizen participation are identified: information exchange, education, support building, supplemental decision making, and representational input. Then through the development of a typology of participatory mechanisms, techniques are matched with their most appropriate objectives. This relationship is further illustrated by examining four techniques in detail. The conclusions suggest that if the relationship between objectives and techniques is ignored in the design of a participatory program, the possibility of a successful program decreases.     

Citizen Participation Strategies

Critical analysis of the general goal of citizen participation reveals basic conflicts between participatory democracy and professional expertise. Planners and other urban professionals have encountered many problems in attempting to encowage citizen participation in commzniiy decision-making. Some of the dilemmas can be resolved by recognizing and adopting a strategy of participation specifically designed to fit the vole and vesoiirces of the particular organization. Five types of strategies are identified: education-therapy, behavioral change, staff supplement, cooptation, and community power.     

Monitory Democracy as Citizen-driven Participatory Planning: The Urban Politics of Redwatch in Sydney

This article analyses a case of citizen-driven participation in urban planning in Sydney, Australia. Drawing on a case study of the local resident action group REDWatch the analysis is undertaken within the context of the hybrid forms of technocratic, participatory and neoliberal planning that are operating in the New South Wales planning system. Framed by the concept of monitory democracy, the analysis explores the four key features of monitory forms of civic action: (1) monitoring powerful social actors; (2) encouraging difference, disagreement, debate and change; (3) making formal power structures more transparent and accountable; and (4) fostering new forms of informal political power. The findings demonstrate that analyses of formal community consultation events and participatory planning policies are far too narrow to determine the civic utility of citizen participation in planning. Expanding the analytical borderland beyond the formal structures of the planning system exposes important informal citizen participation practices that are operating from outside of planning systems. Unlike formal state-driven participatory planning events and policies, these informal citizen-driven participatory planning practices can deal with planning hybridity and conflict, which are increasingly central to many contemporary planning systems.     

“This is for the Children,the Grandchildren …”: Houses of Moroccan Immigrants in Metropolitan Tel Aviv

The meaning of migrant housing materiality has not been adequately researched, especially when compared to the meaning of the home for immigrants, a matter of extensive discussion in the past two decades. This paper focuses on the meaning of housing materiality for 12 immigrants who migrated from Morocco to Israel some 60?years ago. Drawing on qualitative data gathered in 2007 and 2008, the paper develops a theoretical framework considering “house as community” and “house materiality” as two interrelating explanations for the migrant housing materiality. Through this framework, and with the concepts of performance and performativity, the paper first explores former houses of participants in Morocco and then presents current houses in Tel Aviv, Israel, to establish links between the two housing forms and reveal the meanings of objects in the homes. It is argued that as a reaction to the dominant Israeli society, housing materiality enables participants to educate successive generations and Israeli society at large about the rich cultural life of Moroccan-Jews that existed before their migration to Israel.