The institutional approach to participation is a key factor for successful engagement of the public in different governance processes in urban planning, for example at community level or in infrastructure planning. While some planning/policy contexts include more sophisticated and matured mechanisms for participation, others are still lacking proper integration of public opinion as a governance tool.

 

In Gualadajara, Mexico, participatory practices are being used to ensure that different interests and aspirations of the nine local authorities that form the Metropolitan Area are considered and combined into shared strategies and more effective investment in metropolitan-wide projects. The Metropolitan Institute of Planning IMEPLAN has been playing a central role in developing methodologies of planning and assessment that have built trust between the stakeholders, contributing with innovative methods for analysing the impacts of projects at the metropolitan scale.

 

Our project aims at investigating the extension to which high-level institutional stakeholders (local authorities, metropolitan institutes/secretaries of urban planning and development) in Guadalajara incorporate knowledge in decision-support methods/tools in their activities to improve their outcomes and to learn, from these stakeholders’ practices, what could be improved in established decision support methods.