Introduction

As a result of the shifting role of governments across Europe, noted in Chapter Three and elsewhere in this book, civil society and local participation have become more important in public policy, including estate regeneration policy. Regeneration programmes with a more explicit and organised role for local participation are clearly becoming more common. Nevertheless, local participation is still more the exception than the rule in the everyday politics of western societies (Font, 2003), suggesting that the notions of ‘place making’ and ‘collaborative planning’ remain normative ideals rather than empirical realities.

As noted in Chapter Three, the role of citizens and communities is important in determining the nature of places and in the process of ‘place making’. This chapter makes a comparative analysis of local participation in the regeneration processes of large housing estates. The issues that are discussed in the theoretical literature with respect to local participation are set against the empirical situation revealed in the Netherlands and Spain. The juxtaposition of the Netherlands and Spain allows an examination that includes elements of the traditional dichotomy between Northern and Southern Europe. The analysis of forms of local participation on large housing estates in these two countries also highlights certain differentiations between a mature, long-established democratic system (the Netherlands) and a (relatively, if not absolutely, as democracy is an even more recent phenomenon in Central and Eastern Europe) new one (Spain). This factor, which is elaborated later, has some influence on the extent to which the voice of residents is acknowledged in urban policy. This chapter makes clear which is more important in shaping local participation: national factors (including national policy approaches), or neighbourhood characteristics.

The most recent literature suggests that there are two main reasons for undertaking international comparative research in the social sciences: the furtherance of explanatory and predictive theory; and the understanding and transfer of policy from one country to another (Couch et al, 2003). We consider the first reason to be the more important, but since we present recommendations for estate regeneration policy in the conclusions, the paper may also contribute to the understanding of policy transfer.

In the next section, local participation is placed in a broader context and is related to the concepts of urban governance and collaborative planning.