TEARING THE SPACE APART. RESPONSIBLE PARTICIPATION OR SELF-SERVING PARTICIPATION

Participation in spatial planning has specific origins rooted in the ideology that in the past was responsible for inhuman actions and large-scale social manipulations. This article is an account on participation, written in the context of over twenty years of experience in actively introducing participatory techniques into various planning procedures. The original assumptions about making spatial planning a matter of importance to local communities had to collide with the reality determined both by the authorities and by individual and collective interests. The attempt to reorient the paradigm of social participation is aimed at preserving many of its positive features.