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Participating the Public: Group Process, Politics, and Planning

Department of urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii.

Peter Adler

Hawaii Justice Foundation; department of urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu.

Neal Milner

Department of political science at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu.

The use of new group process techniques in the review of projects and in developing plans and policies can result in meetings that are more civil, more efficient, more satisfying to participants, and more useful in terms of the information that is generated. However, planners need to be aware that facilitated processes can be used to deflect discussion of value issues, to control difficult participants, and to manipulate participative processes. While the techniques of improved facilitation practices are much discussed and new checklists for improved facilitation tactics are being developed, larger issues about deliberative politics, about the relationships between facilitated meetings and agency agendas, and about the criteria for appraising the outcomes of facilitated processes are not yet getting the attention they deserve. This essay describes the extensive use of group processes for planning in a variety of substantive settings in Hawaii. Based on this experience, we offer some norms of good practice that indicate how we might be more attentive to the micro-politics of group processes and their use in planning processes.

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