Citizen Participation in Architecture and Urban Planning Confronted with Arnstein’s Ladder: Four Experiments into Popular Neighbourhoods of Hainaut Demonstrate Another Hierarchy

Widely used and disseminated, Arnstein’s ladder is considered a reference for citizen participation. It, nevertheless, involves a recurrent bias and a certain confusion when confronted with projects in the Belgian and French working-class districts of cross-border Hainaut. Characterised by fundamentally opposed management systems (one bureaucratic and hierarchical, the other democratic or even delegative), these worksites challenge Arnstein’s concepts and allow us to understand that information is not a level in the participation ladder, but the condition for the functioning of the whole system. Likewise, they also teach us that manipulation and delegation are not opposite extremes but can percolate in any level of participation. Finally, they reveal that the interlocking of powers and the interplay of stakeholders can easily turn the established participation mechanism from exemplary to revolting and vice versa.