Balancing participatory planning and planning for resilience in nature-based solutions. A case of transformative agency?

ABSTRACTParticipatory planning and planning for resilience figure as major trends in striving towards urban sustainability. Yet, recent studies problematize citizen participation in planning for resilience, indicating the need for closer research on surrounding processes and the limits planners face in leading participants to sustainable outcomes. Providing a basis for cross-case learning, the paper examines five urban planning projects in Northern Europe that attempted to involve stakeholders in enhancing urban resilience via nature-based solutions. Considering structural factors that limit planners’ agency in the Nordic and (post-socialist) Baltic context, the results convey tensions between inclusivity and resilience as common challenges across cases that manifest in conflicts over landscape aesthetics, neoliberal contestations of space, and diverting priority setting of stakeholders. The paper argues that these challenges triggered creative strategies which unleashed potentials for transformative planning agency including attempts to gain legitimacy and stakeholder support, build environmental awareness and knowledge among stakeholder groups, and facilitate conflict resolution in stakeholder interactions.KEYWORDS: Participatory planningplanners’ experiencesustainable urban developmentplanning for resiliencetransformative agencynature-based solutions Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 The literature on participation is well developed and informed by planning practice. As this has been covered deeply elsewhere, we point the reader to Luyet et al. (Citation2012) for a review with respect to environmental planning, including advantages and risks of participation. We also highlight the well-known ‘ladder of participation’ (Arnstein Citation1969) as well as ‘communicative’ (Healey Citation1992; Citation2003) and ‘deliberative’ planning (Innes and Booher Citation2016; Sager Citation2009), which provide crucial background to current debates around participation.2 While we generally refer to planners in their ‘public official’ capacities, one case had the particularity of involving planning practitioners in academia and in the private sector, which was immaterial to the results. For confidentiality and anonymity, we decline to identify the case.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by H2020 Societal Challenges: [grant no 869764]; Interreg Central Baltic Programme: [grant no 14.5.2018 1/26].