Neighborhood Planning as Collaborative Democratic Design

Problem: Historically, neighborhood participation has lapsed into NIMBYism or has not been especially effective at long-term, inclusive, and integrative planning.

Purpose: I aim to describe and analyze an example of how local governments can function as civic enablers and capacity builders for collaborative and accountable planning among neighborhood stakeholders and city government.

Methods: This is a case study of Seattle's neighborhood planning approach in the 1990s based on semistructured interviews with 33 current and former planners, other officials, and neighborhood activists, and review of a broad selection of neighborhood plans and other planning documents and newspaper coverage of the planning process.

Results and conclusions: The city of Seattle developed a set of tools and resources to empower local citizens in the planning process while also holding them accountable for actions consistent with specified broad values and planning targets. This, together with the city's substantial investment in neighborhood planning staff, who served as relational organizers and intermediaries of trust, was critical to the success of neighborhood planning and to the emergence of a collaborative governance culture among highly diverse and often contentious community associations, business interests, city departments, and the city council.

Takeaway for practice: Diverse neighborhoods can find common ground and make positive progress on planning to address shared citywide concerns. However, they need staff assistance to do this. Neighborhood planners can play this role, but only if cities fund them to do this time-consuming work and provide institutional support and guidance.

Key Words

• neighborhood planning,
• deliberative democracy,
• Seattle,
• collaboration,
• civic capacity