Evaluation of Public Participation

TLDR

Public participation has become a central element of planning, yet evaluation of participatory processes remains underdeveloped despite extensive theoretical and practical attention. The study investigates how frequently, why, and how planners evaluate participation in practice and presents evaluation criteria and recommendations from experienced planners. The authors surveyed 761 AICP‑certified planners nationwide to gather data on evaluation practices and criteria. Planners rarely conduct formal evaluations, instead relying on informal assessments that use a broad set of criteria aligned with established planning theory.

Abstract

Public participation has become a central element of planning activity over the last decades. The planning literature has given considerable attention to participation in theory and practice, discussing its benefits for democratic governance, its multiple goals and criteria for assessing success. Although planning academics and practitioners understand the importance of participation and know that participatory processes often fail, the field of participation evaluation lags behind. This paper explores how often, why and how planners evaluate participation in practice. It builds on data collected through a nationally representative survey of 761 AICP-certified planners. We find that they rarely evaluate participation formally. Informal evaluations rely on a wide range of criteria about participation processes and outcomes consistent with the criteria identified by planning theory. The paper presents these evaluation criteria and the practices and recommendation of the planners with most experience in participation evaluation.