Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The urban green areas have a great importance for the local environment in the cities and for people's health. Municipalities own many of the urban green areas and they make plans for these areas, so called green plans, to improve the long-term decision-making. Public participation is getting more and more attention in the society and when including public participation in planning it is called collaborative planning.
This project is a comparison of two green plans of which one is using traditional planning and the other one is using collaborative planning. By comparing them, strengths and weaknesses with collaborative planning can be visualised.
The vision of the traditional plan made in Malmö, Sweden, is to fulfil the citizens green need with a variety of green areas. The vision of the collaborative plan in Vanda, Finland, is to plan together with the citizens for a sustainable management.
Malmö's plan is using inventories and analyses to give a clear picture of the situation today. From that, the planners have developed suggestions for improvement of the green structure. Vanda's planning process started with public meetings where the citizens were valuing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats with the green areas. Smaller working groups were then further evolving this material. Local development committees were prioritising which the most important green areas are, as well as prioritising the suggestions for improvement of the green structure. A draft plan was made and sent out for consideration as well as presented at open meetings, changes were made and then the plan was finally approved upon.
Strengths with collaborative planning are that the knowledge of the citizens, planners and experts is combined. When local people can influence the green areas they become adapted to the local needs. The decisions taken get a better quality and conflicts are dealt with in an early stage.
Weaknesses with collaborative planning are that the process is more difficult to handle. The results are more difficult to present because it does not provide quantitative facts and clear analyses but is the result from a discussion and a learning process. Collaborative planning takes more time than traditional planning and therefore more resources are needed.