Community Participation in Decision Making Processes in Urban Planning: the Case of Kaunas M.A
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs 2021, Volume 5, Number 2, pages 197– 208 Original scientific paper Community Participation in Decision Making Processes in Urban Planning: The Case of Kaunas M.A. Laura Jankauskaitė-Jurevičienė , Dr. Aušra Mlinkauskienė a and b Kaunas University of Technology, Civil engineering and architecture faculty, Kaunas, Lithuania Email 1: [email protected] , Email 2: [email protected] ARTICLE INFO: Article History: ABSTRACT Received 9 July 2020 Accepted 29 August 2020 Participation in decision-making processes foreshadows enabling citizens, Available online 18 September 2020 communities, non-governmental organizations and other interested parties to influence the formulation of policies and laws affecting them. The purpose of Keywords: this study is not only to review Lithuanian legal documents but also to analyse Community; recent processes in Kaunas city planning. Kaunas city is undergoing various Urban planning; urban processes, which do not always meet the needs of the community. This Spatial planning; study presents an analysis of the forms of community involvement in the urban Decision-making processes. planning processes and survey data on the effectiveness of community involvement. The methodology requires using a sociological survey with representatives of the city community and a comparative analysis between legal obligations and actual urbanization process. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS (2021), 5(2), 197-208. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2021.v5n2-3 www.ijcua.com Copyright © 2020 Laura Jankauskaitė-Jurevičienė, Aušra Mlinkauskienė. This article is published with open access at www.ijcua.com 1 . Introduction Public participation has become an important Control (Arnstein, 1969). Today, planning topic of governance in the 20ttcenturyArnstein theorists and practitioners actively advocate in 1969 described public participation as public participation in spatial planning. follows: “The idea of citizen participation is a Accordingly, Marcus Lane observed that little like eating spinach: no one is against it in government has been replaced by principle because it is good for you”. In her governance (Marcus, 2005). Activity, due to article, the author describes the influence of public participation, is driven by theoretical society in government decision-making as a ladder, where at the bottom of the ladder are *Corresponding Author: Kaunas University of technology, Civil engineering and Manipulation (first step) and Therapy (second architecture faculty, Kaunas, Lithuania step), at the topmost - (seventh step) are Email address: [email protected] Delegated Power and (eighth step) Citizen How to cite this article: Jankauskaitė-Jurevičienė, L., & Mlinkauskienė, A. (2021). Community Participation in Decision Making Processes in Urban Planning: The Case of Kaunas. Journal of Contemporary Urban Affairs, 5(2), 197-208. https://doi.org/10.25034/ijcua.2021.v5n2-3 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 5(2), 197-208/ 2021 and practical reasons. In practice, public presented in chapter 4 and the conclusions participation is the key of the democratic and suggestions in chapter 5. process. This makes government institutions Historical analysis of public participation in accountable to the society, enables it to spatial planning was performed to find out the incorporate non-professional knowledge into development of involvement in decision- decision-making, improves public policy making, historical stages, implemented reforms support and improves planning outcomes. and their impact. The analysis of the most Participation in itself is valuable as a political important documents describing the public goal, as it increases social capital and gives participation in the territorial planning citizens more opportunities when they want a processes was performed to find out the ways, stronger voice in decision-making. means and emerging problems of public Lithuanian researchers examine the issue of involvement in the territorial planning public participation both on a theoretical processes in Lithuania. (legal basis) and on an empirical basis Non-random convenient selection, voluntary (Bardauskienė, 2007; Jakaitis, 2005; Cirtautas, sampling was used for the sociological survey. 2011). However, the activity of society in Data were collected using social networks vis- political life and decision-making is more often a-vis: i). Facebook, by submitting a survey on examined (Merkys, 2020). In the field of urban multiple community accounts and sharing the planning, the attitude of the population in the profile through personal accounts. This method formation of urban architecture, the activity of of data collection was used purposefully to find the society in the consideration of urban plans, out who and the extent of those active in social and the causality of the passivity of the society networks and how much they are interested in are most often examined. Examining the territorial planning problems. Before the survey, articles of foreign authors on sociological it was hypothesized that Kaunas city residents research related to public participation, it is were very little interested in participating in the noticeable that the connections with certain spatial planning processes. social aspects are usually examined. Most The following sociodemographic variables authors have studied community participation were examined in the study: Gender, Age, through social and demographic factors and Education, Occupation, Community activities less analysis of the impact of social and and Place of residence. Analysis in this study is physical variables on a given problem (Bottini, quantitative and Quantitative analysis and IBM 2018). SPSS was used for the analysis. The level of This article discusses short historical statistical significance was defined as p <0.05. development and the main spatial planning documents related to public participation in 3. Historical and document analysis of public spatial planning processes in Lithuania, and the participation in spatial planning opportunities for residents to express their views 3.1. Historical analysis of public participation and make suggestions on the projects. A pilot in spatial planning in Lithuania sociological survey was conducted using Changes in the territory of Lithuania are closely community social networks to find out how related to the political, economical, social and active and involved the population is in Kaunas other factors. These factors have a direct city spatial planning processes. The survey aim impact on the spatial structure of the was also to understand the activity of the social landscape. Lithuania has undergone many network, its main audience and the rational for land reforms over the centuries, but land this type of audience. reforms in the last few centuries are of particular importance. According to the 2. Materials and Methods Wallachian reform (16th century), the land of A pilot study was conducted to analyze public all manors was declared as the complete participation in spatial planning by literature property of the Grand Duke and was analysis and spatial planning documents, combined into one area measured into the raising a hypothesis, conducting the research Wallachians (about 21.38 ha). The villages were and drawing conclusions. An analysis of the organized and distributed, a three-field system literature and documents is provided in was established. As part of the land reform, chapters 3.1 and 3.2. The results of the study are towns and church villages were established, manor houses, street-planned and scrappy M.A. Laura Jankauskaitė-Jurevičienė & Dr. Aušra Mlinkauskienė 198 JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY URBAN AFFAIRS, 5(2), 197-208/ 2021 villages, residential areas were also connected use of the territory and land plots and the with the road network (Jankauskaitė- development of activities in Lithuania territory Jurevičienė, 2016). (Law on Spatial Planning of the Republic of From the middle of the 19th century until the Lithuania, 1995, 2019). Thus, spatial planning is middle of the 20th Lithuania territory was a complex process that combines the interests managed and used as an individual farming of the groups interested in spatial system. At the time of these reforms, public development, the needs of society and the participation in land management was not protection of the environment. possible, because land management was Major changes in the regulation of spatial sorely within the jurisdiction of the nobility. planning took place in 2014 and are valid until The annexation of Lithuania in the 1940s by the now. The new regulation aims at simplifying, Soviet Union began the destruction of accelerating and improving the spatial traditional, cultural and spiritual values and the planning process. With the creation of the new creation of new political-social structures - spatial planning system, new levels of this collective farms. During the Soviet land reform, planning were established, the principle of private land was nationalized, after which parcel planning was abandoned and the manors and small individual farms disappeared projects of land holdings were removed from (Jankauskaitė-Jurevičienė, 2016). Thus, the the system of spatial planning documents. period from the 1940s