Topic: The desire and call for more participation of private and civil society actors is present in many cities. However, this raises the question: Who can be reached and how? Who can be involved on which issues? If the public sector wants to enable and initiate participation, it must be able to address the people and organisations concerned. In large cities, civil society and private sector involvement in urban development issues is spread across a variety of different "scenes". These contribute their interests, knowledge and activities to different themes or sub-issues. The study examines the network structures of civil society and private sector involvement in urban development issues for the Munich area. With the help of a social network analysis, the nature and extent of content-related, spatial and media proximity between the various actors is examined. Based on knowledge of the scope of current participation offerings and their causes from the perspective of the various "scenes" of civil society, possibilities for optimising future participation offerings can be discussed.
The study offers added value for the following actors:
- The public sector recognises the diverse differentiation of civil society organisations and groups with their specific thematic and spatial concerns with which they are involved in urban and regional development.
- Civil society organisations and groups strengthen their self-perception and their perception of others. Civil society actors recognise their position in the participation network and can thus identify and use synergy potential with other participants.
- Private companies gain a deeper understanding of the stakeholders and cooperation partners in which they are embedded with their activities in the urban region. As acting actors in the city and region, the companies gain knowledge to better adapt their own participation formats to the target groups.
Brief description:
The project surveys the participation landscape for the Munich area based on activities related to urban and regional development that took place in a city over a period of three to five years. Events of public and semi-public face-to-face communication are recorded, which are organized by actors of civil society, politics, administration or companies. These events take place according to a plan and allow at least a simple interaction of the participants. The events present and discuss content with a spatial, thematic, political-administrative reference to the city region. The collected data is evaluated with the help of a quantitative and qualitative network analysis. The network analysis is suitable to identify interfaces and synergies between topics and spaces of urban development and the related civil society and private organisations and groups.
The expected results of the study include:
- Visualisation of the topology of the city-specific participation network consisting of groups of actors, activities, thematic and spatial orientation and media reception
- Identification of common interests and topics on the different spatial scale levels neighbourhood, city and region for the different "scenes" of civil society as well as the groups of actors from politics, administration and business
- Knowledge of the gaps in the network, in particular of poorly networked groups of actors, as well as of potential synergies for bundling activities and interests with the same goals
- Knowledge of the scope of current participation offerings and their causes from the perspective of the various "scenes" of civil society and discussion of ways to optimise future participation offerings
The research results on the Munich participatory landscape are visually presented in maps and diagrams. They form the basis for discussion of the results with the actors identified in the study: Organisations and groups from civil society, public administration, politics and the private sector. Together with these target groups, a focus group workshop in spring 2015 will validate the results of the network analysis, discuss synergy potentials of the participation landscape and critically question the current scope of participation offerings. The aim of the workshop is to jointly reflect on the qualities, deficits and potential of the Munich participatory landscape in a protected setting.
- Who talks to whom about what?
- What do today's formats of co-determination and participation achieve?
- Which thematic and spatial interfaces of the various actors can be better managed in the future?
Participating team members:
Dr. Agnes Förster, Prof. Dr. Alain Thierstein