At this juncture, it is vital that we look at the design of future policy interventions to better address the balance between affordable and secure housing, and our larger scale sustainability objectives. The upcoming European Affordable Housing Plan will include measures to accelerate housing construction, renovate existing buildings, and end homelessness by 2030. It will also further enact controls on short-term (tourist) rentals, to improve affordability for locals. This presents an opportunity to address the deepening inequalities in Europe’s housing sector; however, it is vital that this policy is not enacted in a vacuum.

We need to make sure affordable housing policies are considering and addressing the failures of existing policy implementation and working alongside agendas like the green transition. While a unified, cohesive EU housing strategy has the potential for positive change, it will be most impactful if it places vulnerable and lower/middle income groups at the centre of new policy, while maintaining progress towards a just transition. The reality is that without place-based policy design that considers the intersection of social justice and the environment in the housing sector, a truly cohesive Europe will remain out of reach. With this in mind, the question remains as to how we can balance the competing pressures on available land, expanding housing access while also preserving nature. 

There are several points to consider here:

In the US, the Green Infrastructure Policy initially adopted in 2000 and its subsequent updates promotes the use of green infrastructure in urban planning to manage stormwater, reduce erosion, and increase soil permeability. 

In the UK, the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) introduced in 2012 and its subsequent updates promotes sustainable development in urban areas and includes provisions for protecting and enhancing soil resources (reuse of previously developed land (brownfields) and limiting soil sealing) and encourages local planning authorities to prioritize soil conservation in urban planning.

In the European Union, a Research and Innovation mission, titled “A Soil Deal for Europe”, was launched in 2021. It focuses on achieving healthy soils in Europe by 2030 and seeks to combat soil degradation, erosion, and contamination and specifically looks into the development of soil inclusive planning and supports research on soil health in the urban context. 

2. THE TOKENISATION OF CITIZEN PARTICIPATION

Successful participation processes can be beneficial in enabling individuals to play a more active role (Smith, 1973) in their communities or neighbourhoods. However, the use of citizen participation as a tokenistic and performative tool to find solutions to a problem without the actual redistribution of power is a reality. To establish that their policies have received the approval of the citizens (Huisman, 2014) governments can at times engage in such a tactic. This sort of tokenisation is in the form of a ‘box-ticking’ exercise wherein people’s voices and recommendations seldom manifest in actual plans or policies (Stapper & Duyvendak, 2020).

In a time when the combined effects of the devasting climate crisis and rising social inequalities are impacting the everyday lives of numerous people, tokenistic practices in participation mechanisms are immensely detrimental. Considering the complex and interdependent nature of many such contemporary issues, there is an imminent need for academia, policy-makers, practitioners, and (private and public) institutions to engage in collaborative ways of re-envisioning citizen participation in a more bottom-up way. This could also mean thinking beyond simply asking for citizen’s perspectives on issues but enabling local communities to take the lead in setting the agenda and defining the issues at hand. Hence, it’s also thinking along the lines of how to ensure that citizens are not always at the receiving end of deliberative governance but are actively leading discussions.

3. POWER ASYMMETRIES AND CITIZENS’ LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR RIGHTS

Citizen Participation without the redistribution of power especially to those who are marginalised can be a futile exercise, scholars like Arnstein (1969) have pointed out. Over the years, studies have shown that participation is more accessible to the rich and educated. In fact, not all citizens possess the same level of knowledge/awareness about participation opportunities, how to take part in them, even their civil and political rights, and how they can influence decision-making (Esau, 2007). These varied levels of awareness should be a key consideration for governments when devising participatory governance and planning processes.

Moreover, inequality in participation in urban neighbourhoods occurs on the one hand through the over-representation of a certain demographic – the privileged; and on the other hand, through the exclusion of ethnic minorities, lower-educated people and those who are in a weaker position by virtue of their age, and gender (Tonkens and Verhoeven, 2019). In a study conducted in different urban neighbourhoods of Amsterdam, it was found that various arm-twisting tactics were used by dominant actors like the municipality and housing corporations to displace people from their homes to actualise the state-gentrification policy (Huisman, 2014). This illustrated the power asymmetry between different actors caused by the lack of knowledge of the citizens’ rights and even the power to resist. Such an example shows that in some situations state actors can benefit from the citizens’ lack of awareness to fulfil their agenda. Hence, participation can cause or enhance injustices when no power is transferred to the citizens, particularly the marginalised and vulnerable communities (Huisman, 2014).

MOVING BEYOND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION AS JUST A BUZZWORD

Bottom-up decision-making through citizen panels, advisory bodies, neighbourhood meetings, and representatives to government committees, are widely used mechanisms. To ensure the efficacy of such participation processes, it is important to take a step back and check if, firstly, participation is actually leading to the re-distribution of power to citizens, and secondly, if participation is
representative.

Thus, the critiques highlighting the inclusion and exclusion of people from participation processes, the tokenisation of citizen participation, and the power asymmetry between actors caused by the lack of knowledge of the citizens’ rights (and access to knowledge), bring to the fore a crucial point: the unequal involvement of people is not only a result of their socio-economic background but also the institutions and structures that are systemically and inherently unjust (Byskov, 2021; Herzog & Lepenies, 2022). Hence, the asymmetries in power and opportunities that different sections of a population have are also complemented by ‘systematic biases’ in policy, wherein the privileged have a much greater influence on policy (Drèze and Sen, 2002).

In the recent drive to make decision-making more just and inclusive, it becomes imperative to understand who gets left behind in these participatory processes, and whose voices get heard or amplified. The current discourses on bringing in innovative practices to citizen participation could gain from a more concerted effort towards envisioning just and democratic participation in a way that places common people at the core of decision-making. However, in doing so, it is important that we don’t follow the trope that citizen participation is the best thing to do in urban planning and governance.

Envisioning just and democratic decision-making is also understanding that not every decision can and has to be taken through deliberative practices, as well as the fact that not every citizen is interested in participating or can participate. It is about thinking along the lines of how decision-making can be made more inclusive, and how can we improve the engagement of those communities that do not participate but want to participate. Policymakers and governments, in general, would benefit from a deep dive into peoples’ similar or differential reasons behind participating; their expectations and goals concerning the participation processes from their neighbourhood, city, or region, and their local governments; situations deterring them from participating or the types of difficulties they face.