Lei Xie at Urban Transitions 2018
12 Nov 2018Sustainable city is a multi-faceted and contested concept which is recognized differently by different actors. Public participation is considered an essential part of sustainable urban governance, where citizens are being included in specific ways in shaping understandings of the priorities and pressures of urban development, service delivery, and the future of the urban area. Public participation has been incorporated into sustainable development policy processes in cities around the world, although the rationale, motivations and methods of such practices vary in different socio-political and economic conditions.
Lei Xie is going to attend Urban Transitions conference in Barcelona this November. Its main theme is Integrating Urban and Transport Planning, Environment and Health for Healthier Urban Living.
Adopting three cases spanning two continents, Shanghai, Nottingham and Stuttgart (Germany) offer a context of sharp contrast regarding urban scale, administrative and political culture, understandings of urban sustainability, economic development and public resources. This article aims to understand the rationales and outcomes of public participation in these highly varied cities, focusing on a public citizens’ survey utilised by all three city authorities. Triangulation methods are used and include document analysis, semi-structured interviews with government officials and civil society organizations. This paper provides an early discussion on the emerging findings of this ongoing research project.
The early results indicate that contextual factors play an important role in the design and use of public surveys. In places where the local economy is strong, manifold issues around the quality of life often beyond the fulfilment of basic needs are being surveyed, while a poorer context is linked with more questions around social problems and individual behaviours. Under different political systems, the city authorities have shown different intentions when engaging the public. In China where the political system remains restrictive and top-down, government’s incorporation of the public has been symbolic with an intention to mobilize public’s consent on closed policy debates, where local development priorities are often set by central government. In comparison, in Stuttgart where democracy is boosted by a large middle class and strong local autonomy, the city has shown firm commitment to engage the public via citizen surveys, but key tensions arise between economic development and the area’s reliance on car manufacturing on the one hand, the environmental damage this causes on the other. In Nottingham, a city that suffers from low wages and high unemployment, like many former manufacturing cities in Northern England and the Midlands, the Westminster-centric system of UK governance and neoliberal political culture leaves the city with little flexibility in how resources are used and priorities set. In the latter case, citizens are understood as customers whose satisfaction is central to local service delivery and their individual agency is considered important in resolving social, economic and environmental problems through behaviour change. In sum, different cities have not only shown varying perception of sustainability but also how public engagement plays a role to realizing sustainable urban governance.