A new step-by-step guide to better planning has been launched by the South Dublin Urban Initiative (SDUI). The guide is aimed at helping communities take advantage of the new opportunities for community participation in the planning process.
The guide is also aimed at local authorities and contains tips on community consent which may be useful to property developers in reducing delays due to objections.
The guide details how environmental schemes may be planned and implemented particularly in the face of vandalism.
Called Consultation Techniques for Planning and Implementing Environmental Improvements with Local Communities, the guide presents examples based on the experience of SDUI with seven communities throughout west Tallaght and north Clondalkin between 1996 and 2000.
It highlights the approach of neighbourhood planning in Jobstown, which was presented awards from the Irish Planning Institute and the Royal Town Planning Institute of the UK. Jobstown was also singled out in the National Development Plan as a model of participatory planning.
The new guide also formed the basis for a conference on community planning, "Partnership or paternalism: a new voice for communities in local decision making", which took place in Dublin yesterday.
"The URBAN experience found that when communities are involved at all stages of the development of a project, there is more agreement all round and subsequent ownership of the project in question," explained Mr Geoff Ginnetty manager of SDUI.
"Our experience also showed that the local knowledge residents had was as essential as the technical knowledge of planners, architects and engineers. For example, while a children's playground may seem like a good idea, residents may be all too aware of the risks of loitering or vandalism in an open space such as a playground."
According to Mr Ginnetty the key to sustainable planning is to ensure that residents are asked for their opinions in advance of any activity.
Indeed, following the success of a number of European initiatives aimed at participatory planning, it is hard to imagine that local authorities still consider "public consultation" to be merely a matter of telling the community what the authority's plans are - but they do.
In addition to starting with the local residents, as Meath County Council did when the expansion of Navan was planned, but as Wicklow failed to do when the expansion of Newtownmountkennedy was planned, participation within the community must take place and at every stage of the planning.
"They are the people who have to continue living in the area when the bulldozers and the town planners have moved on. If they are not happy with what has been left behind, it may not be regarded as an environmental improvement and could fall victim to neglect or vandalism", he added.
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