Community Empowerment is about people and government, working together to make life better. It involves more people being able to influence decisions about their communities, and more people taking responsibility for tackling local problems, rather than expecting others to[1].
There are three key ingredients to community empowerment: first is “active citizens”, who with the motivation, skills and confidence to speak up for their communities and say what improvements are needed. Second is “strengthened communities” – that is groups with the capability and resources to bring people together to work out shared solutions. Third is the “partnership with public bodies”, which willing and able to work as partners with local people[2].
Three levels of public participation in the process of planning are clarified: first is “talk”. The public bodies still lead the planning power and people participate through talk. Second level is that public bodies and stakeholders do together with partnership. The third level is to empower communities and ensure that in planning process, issues and options should be presented openly and discussed widely before and after plan forming.
2.Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities[3]
Across the world, a greater participation and involvement from individuals, organizations and businesses has been taking place to decide on the outcome of various planning decisions. In the report-“Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International experience in mediation, negotiation and engagement in making plans.” It says that “Engagement and negotiation are at the heart of the participatory planning process.” And also, as the governance and societies have changed since modern world, diversity issues should be tackled. “…inclusion does not just happen, it has to be worked at and that means time and money will have to be invested into planning with communities”, which is a core thinking for participatory planning and it’s goal to “sustainable community.”
In this report, it also mentions that there are three main reasons why planning practice is changing in many different countries. These are: (1) public distrust of planning based on past practices; (2) governments' desire to improve the co-ordination spatially between different sectors; and (3)a recognition amongst governments and nongovernmental organizations that sustainable development requires consensus building and engagement with citizens. As No3 points out that sustainable development is supported by common ground of different groups and people. We consider that once sustainable communities are practiced in most areas through participatory planning, the development of sustainability will be realized.
3. Planning for Real[4]
Planning for Real uses simple models as a focus for people to put forward and prioritise ideas on how their area can be improved. It is a highly visible, hands-on community development and empowerment tool, which people of all abilities and backgrounds find easy and enjoyable to engage in.
A large 3-dimensional model of a neighbourhood is constructed, preferably by local people, using cardboard cut-outs for buildings pasted onto a base plan fixed to polystyrene or cardboard. Participants place suggestion cards on the model indicating what they want to see happen and where. The cards are sorted and prioritised to establish an action plan which is followed up by working groups.
One case of “planning for real” is given as following:
Working in partnership with a number of stakeholders, including Southbrook Community Association, Vibrant Fibre and Threshold Studios, to develop a short term youth programme of activity on the Southbrook estate to raise the profile of the issues around the lack of youth provision in the area.
The NIF (Neighbourhood Initiatives Foundation) supported Southbrook Community Association to develop the skills and capacity; through helping to establish projects and actions that the group felt were key to delivering the Southbrook Neighbourhood Action Plan. The plan has a strong emphasis on supporting young people and young people’s projects - as it is believed that these are key elements to regenerating the estate.
The difficulty in this case is that the project was initially aimed at attempting to engage young people who were ‘hard to reach’ and the project was intentionally only publicised through word of mouth and through leafleting. It was difficult to assess whether the young people who did participate were actually ‘hard to reach’. Without working with a key captive audience it has also been difficult to get young people initially involved.
In the end, the case study concludes with three public service targets which are:
• Make places safer and tackle anti-social behaviour.
• Engage and empower local people and communities
• Provide appropriate provision for children and young people, and tackle inequalities
Reference:
- Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International experience in mediation, negotiation and engagement in making plans, Sep 2003, UK
- Engaging Young People – Southbrook Estate, Daventry , http://www.nif.co.uk/planningforreal/
[2] Source: http://www.communities.gov.uk/corporate/
[3] Source: “Participatory Planning for Sustainable Communities: International experience in mediation, negotiation and engagement in making plans”
[4] Source: http://www.communityplanning.net/methods/planning_for_real.php
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