Social participation in planning, design, and management of public spaces: the case of Mexico

ABSTRACT Top-down approaches often fail to involve, collaborate with, and consider social actors in the process of planning, design, and maintenance of public spaces (PDMPS). This research addresses how social participation is included in PDMPS in the Mexican case, by identifying the actors, the level of communication achieved, and their authority and power in the PDMPS process. The paper employs a case study approach, informed by semi-structured interviews. We use a democracy diagram to uncover the diversity of involved actors and how they are involved in the process. We show how government could provide support for social participation to implement participatory processes in PDMPS.


Introduction
Public spaces are defined as essential assets in the social life of contemporary cities (Jacobs, 1961;Madanipour, 2015), as places where social life and interaction unfold, economic activities are developed, and traditions are reflected (Jacobs, 1961;Harvey, 2000).This research thus understands public spaces as different types of physical areas in a city where diverse social, cultural, artistic, recreational, political activities and functions unfold and where social expressions and manifestations can be shared between citizens, creating a sense of community or collectiveness (Gehl & Svarre, 2013;Madanipour, 2015;Narciso, 2018;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).Despite the attempts to give citizens a more central and active place in the different stages of planning, design and maintenance of public spaces (PDMPS) (Arango Cuartas & López Valencia, 2021), studies of participatory processes uncovered a lack of several elements: government support for participatory processes, trust between government and local residents, and social visibility and reach.Further, public space interventions do not always fulfil residents' needs (see Appendix Table A1).
CONTACT Sergio Alvarado Vazquez urbacheko@gmail.com;s.alvaradovazquez@utwente.nl Because of the recognised relevance and challenges of social participation in the PDMPS, there is a need for a deeper understanding of how participatory processes are being developed in countries with emerging economies (Cinderby et al., 2021;Chitrakar et al., 2022).Both in the international and in the Latin American context, researchers expressed the need for further research to better understand how participatory processes can help inform, assess, manage and improve PDMPS (Páramo et al., 2018;Cinderby et al., 2021;Duivenvoorden et al., 2021;Gierhake, 2021;Chitrakar et al., 2022).For instance, from the Mexican perspective, there are only a few studies on how social participation has been included in the PDMPS.They focus on green infrastructure, gentrification, urban poverty and governance (Hernández Bonilla, 2008;Terán et al., 2012;De Alba-Ulloa & Arellanes-Arellanes, 2017;Gómez Carmona, 2018;Giner et al., 2019;Ipiña & Peña, 2021;Alvarado Vazquez & Casiano Flores, 2022).Our research incorporates the highlights of the cited studies with regard to how stakeholders are included in decision-making processes in the analytical model we adopted for this study -the democracy diagram.
In order to obtain a deeper understanding of how social participation is included in PDMPS in an emerging economy, this paper addresses the involvement of social actors in PDMPS in the Mexican context.We examine: (i) the actors taking part in these participatory processes, (ii) the level of communication achieved in the process, and (iii) the level of authority and power.Our research adapts Fung's democracy cube, which is a framework that focuses on the range of institutional possibilities for public participation (Fung, 2006).Its usefulness lies in understanding the potential and limits of participatory forms based on public discussions with different actors.As our research focuses on understanding social participation in PDMPS, this framework is considered suitable for understanding how key actors within the PDMPS understand the involvement of residents in these processes and what could be a desirable social participation scenario.We adapted the democracy cube into a democracy diagram used as an analytical model to explore the degree of social participation that citizens achieve in participatory processes (Fung, 2006).We use a case study approach and employ explorative qualitative methods, drawing on semi-structured interviews with four groups of governance actors in two cities of the Mexico City Megalopolis: Mexico City and Puebla.
This paper is structured into five sections.Section 2 presents the literature review, exploring the advantages and the current challenges of social participation in PDMPS.Section 3 outlines the methodology, providing a concise overview of the case study context and emphasising its importance for investigating social participation in PDMPS.We adopt an analytical framework, denominated the Democracy Diagram, designed to present a more comprehensive representation of participatory processes in PDMPS.This section 3 also covers the methods used to collect and analyse the data obtained during the semi-structured interviews.Section 4 presents the findings, articulating the three dimensions of our proposed democracy diagram.This includes a description and examination of participating actors to determine who are more active in participatory processes and who are underrepresented.The section also includes a description of the level of communication perceived, aiming to elicit the communication gaps, especially between government practitioners and local residents; and measures the level of authority and power relations among government institutions and other stakeholders in decision-making processes within PDMPS.Section 5 focuses on the key insights drawn from the research on social participation in PDMPS.We discuss and compare what is claimed to be the best scenario in a participatory process and what we found in practice in our case study.Section 6 concludes our research by outlining the scientific and social relevance of the current involvement of social actors in PDMPS in the Mexican context.

Social participation
One of the approaches for reshaping public spaces considers the needs and aspirations of local residents through eliciting their knowledge and experience (Hanzl, 2007).Research has stated that local knowledge from different actors can lead to more efficient management of public spaces, focusing on what is most needed while simultaneously saving resources (Pfeffer et al., 2015;Møller et al., 2019).Cruickshank and Coupe (2013) argue that this creative ability does not only reside with the planner or professional designer.Residents can give meaningful feedback on how public spaces are planned or designed (Cruickshank & Coupe, 2013).This transforms the traditional vision of social participation, as the role of the community shifts from being a mere observer to an active participant in the PDMPS.Therefore, for this paper, the concept of social participation is adopted to explore the importance of involving the broader society in the PDMPS.
Participation can be understood as the action of taking part in something.It can be defined as the democratic right for which any person can be involved in a decision process (Rydin & Pennington, 2000).The European Institute for Public Participation (European Institute for Public Participation EIPP, 2009) defines social participation as achieving democratic values such as justice, effectiveness, and legitimacy, usually associated with governance, and as a potential solution for democratic challenges.Social participation is related to other terms, such as citizen participation, community empowerment, co-production, co-innovation, and civic participation (see Appendix, Table A2).In urban planning, social participation is seen as part of the planning processes for democratic scrutiny and as a way to generate legitimacy and social acceptance of urban projects (Rydin & Pennington, 2000;Mahdavinejad & Amini, 2011).Also, it has been used for political purposes such as participatory governance or democracy approaches that promote participant values, skills, and knowledge (Morrissey, 2000).In the field of public participatory geographic information systems (PPGIS), researchers have studied how social participation should be embedded through the use of technology to enable a broader range of stakeholder involvement and ensure higher levels of participation in shared decision-making processes (Sieber, 2006;Mccall & Dunn, 2012;Heikinheimo et al., 2020).
However, the lack of opportunities for social organisations to participate in PDMPS in some contexts diminishes their influence in developing public space projects (Swapan, 2016;Páramo et al., 2018;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).The exclusionary practices among those who have decision-making power in these processes and the needs and views of the users of public spaces are discussed in the following section.

Social participation challenges in planning, design and management of public spaces
In countries with emergent economies, local governments are trying to implement social participation in PDMPS to promote democratic practices and more transparent decisionmaking to engage local residents (United Cities and Local Governments, 2016).The European Union, the World Bank, local governments, and NGOs advocate for including social organisations and local residents in PDMPS (European Union, 2011;Kher Kaw et al., 2020).Under the Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations (United Nations, 2015) recommends enhanced involvement of local residents to create more inclusive cities.Also, the New Urban Agenda advocates for societal participation in the different stages of planning processes (United Nations, 2017).However, practice often fails to live up to intentions, and public space projects frequently fail to incorporate the insights from participatory processes (Swapan, 2016;Riegler & Bylund, 2020;Paukaeva et al., 2021), primarily due to a lack of planning instruments (Guillezeau, 2002;Angotti & Irazábal, 2017;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).
Additionally, participatory processes raise the question of whether citizens want to participate fully or just want to be given the opportunity (Hordijk et al., 2015).Practice shows that actors with professional knowledge are more aware of the urban context and participate more frequently, which results in discrimination of those lacking technical background instead of enhanced integration (Boonstra, 2015;Iwinska, 2017).
Other criticisms of social participation processes arise from failing to translate policy intentions into reality.Time, practice, trust, and persistence are needed for institutional and community partners to become acclimated to the potential benefits of collaborative planning (Swyngedouw, 2005;Maginn, 2007).Recent studies indicate challenges to increasing social participation in the PDMPS (see Appendix Table A1).These include a lack of support from government institutions, low levels of trust between local residents and government, social needs not being considered, poor social visibility and insufficient research, and low awareness of social participation opportunities and outcomes.

Democracy cube
One way to operationalise and analyse participatory processes in urban configurations is through the Fung (2006) democracy cube, a framework which has been applied to democratic governance challenges, participatory community-based technology initiatives in urban planning and to assess transformative infrastructure in planning processes (Pablo et al., 2013;Wehn & Evers, 2014;Cinderby et al., 2021).Fung (2006) democracy cube is based on three dimensions: (i) Who participates: The first dimension looks at the type of involved participant, ranging from select experts to an open invitation to anyone (Pablo et al., 2013;Schrögel & Kolleck, 2019).
(ii) Level of communication: Fung defines communication as the process where local residents participate in a face-to-face conversation, engaging directly as equals and discussing alternative solutions to a public problem.This dimension examines how social actors participate and communicate with one another (as listeners, expressing preferences or developing preferences) and how they make decisions (aggregating and bargaining, deliberating and negotiating, deploying technical expertise) (Pablo et al., 2013;Schrögel & Kolleck, 2019).Pablo et al. (2013) use a different ranking, distinguishing six main modes of communication and decision-making in participatory processes.The first three -(1) listen as a spectator, (2) express preferences, and (3) develop preferencesdo not attempt to translate participant views or preferences into a real decision or action.The second three are (4) aggregation and bargaining, where participants know what they want; (5) deliberation and negotiation, where participants discuss in a group to figure out what they want; and (6) technical expertise, where professionals solve particular issues, usually involving planners, teachers, social workers but excluding everyday citizens.These six modes of communication are measured from least to most intense, indicating the commitment level required from participants (Fung, 2006;Pablo et al., 2013).
For this research, we understand communication as the means of interacting with one another and contributing to making PDMPS decisions.Communication is important because it allows discussions about experiences, forms of knowledge, mutual learning, and collaboration about different constructions of urban futures (Healey, 1997;Smaniotto et al., 2019;Christmann et al., 2020).Existing research has focused on spurring better communication channels within urban planning, especially two-way communication and co-creation settings, thereby enabling better PDMPS channels (Staffans et al., 2020).
(iii) Authority and power: Fung defines authority and power as what participants want versus what public authorities do in reality.This dimension focuses on the impact of participation, on whether citizens have a say in decision-making processes or benefit from it (e.g.learning something new).Similar to Arnstein's (1969) ladder of participation, the cube covers five types of influence, ranging from 'least' influential, where personal benefits exclude participatory decisions or where participants listen and have little or no expectations to influence a policy or actions, to the most influential one, where participants have direct authority over public decisions (Arnstein, 1969;Fung, 2006;Pablo et al., 2013;Schrögel & Kolleck, 2019).The level of authority and power reflects the citizen -government relationship.For example, Ertiö (2015) relates it to the flow of decisions through three main levels (i) consultation, where information flows in one channel from citizens to the government; (ii) criteria power level, where residents can determine a policy; and (iii) operational power level, where residents have the decisionmaking power to translate a policy or service into reality.Participatory processes intend to produce informed decisions by giving a degree of power in decision-making processes to the various stakeholders involved in representing citizen preferences in the final project (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004).
Collaborative and inclusive participation with government officials and other stakeholders can enhance acceptance by the intended users (Fung, 2006).For this research, we define 'authority and power' as the impact of social participation in PDMPS decisionmaking processes.These three dimensions provide the space to map any participatory process.

Methodology
Our research uses a case study approach, and we conducted our data collection in face-to -face interactions involving diverse actors through semi-structured interviews.We analysed the collected data by means of our modified 'democracy diagram' (Lune & Berg, 2017).This allowed us to operationalise our study based on the three dimensions of the theoretical framework mentioned in chapter 2.3 and our analytical framework i.e. democracy diagram, described in chapter 3.4.Modifying Fung's (2006) democracy cube improves our comprehension of different actors' perspectives on social participation and allows us to examine the achieved degree of social participation.Fung's framework has been already applied by other authors in the urban planning field (Pablo et al., 2013;Wehn & Evers, 2014;Cinderby et al., 2021) and offers an established lens through which we can understand the complexity of participatory and decision-making processes.We adapted it after our literature review and field data collection.The adapted model enables us to situate and contrast choices made by a group of actors along the three axes and describe who directly participates, how they communicate inductively, and their level of influence on the decision-making process.
We focus on neighbourhood-scale PDMPS of public spaces owned by the government, with flexible functions, appropriated by a community, and privately or publicly maintained.These can be parks, other green areas, empty plots, streets or the popular neighbourhood corner.They often need more attention in marginalised neighbourhoods as urban growth threatens their existence, and local governments are often less interested in investing in their maintenance (Portal, 2016;Jasso, 2018).

Case study approach
We focus on the context of Mexico due to the recent legislative initiatives put forward by the national government that emphasised the importance of social participation in the planning process, including the development of public spaces.After the first General Law of Human Settlements, Land Management and Urban Development was published in Mexico in 2016, programmes and policies were promoted to create participatory approaches and address urban issues in the country (Poder Legislativo, 2016).Among these is a new official norm of public spaces, which set the bases at a national level for the PDMPS with a focus on improving the well-being of people in the country (Diario Oficial de la Federacion, 2022), the Participatory Planning Manual with an Equity Approach in Communities of Protected Natural Areas (Diario Oficial de la Federacion, 2022) or the guideline to integrate residents in urban planning called 'Trazando ciudades' (Secretaria de Desarrollo Agrario Territorial y Urbano, 2020).However, the lack of involvement of local residents in urban participatory processes in practice, including those related to the PDMPS, and the limited opportunities for local residents to participate remains challenging and have been highlighted by scholars and several actors such as NGOs and even government practitioners (Kuri, 2015;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).
This research uses a case study approach.Mexico is our single case, and the units of analysis are two cities in the country (Yin, 2010): Mexico City and Puebla.Four main aspects guided the selection.
First, geographically, both cities belong to the megalopolis of Central Mexico and have close geographic proximity and historical relation to the development of public spaces.Both cities are among the top 10 contributors to the country's GDP; however, each city has a different budget to invest in the development of public spaces and faces multiple challenges, namely insecurity and lack of attention by local administrations (Kuri, 2015;Jasso, 2018;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).
Second, local-level agendas have tried to promote social participation in topics related to PDMPS through government institutions in both cities, such as the current urban development plan of the city of Puebla (Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2022) or the proposal for the public space law for Mexico City (Congress of Mexico City, 2019).
Third, despite the fact that governmental organisations, NGOs and academic institutions have been working on the inclusion of residents organisations (Asociación Nacional de Parques y Recreación A.C, 2018; Delgadillo, 2018) and the enhancement of the interaction between different actors in PDMPS (Pena-Salmon & Rojas-Caldelas, 2009;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023), the lack of coordination and mismanagement in both cities creates limited opportunities for local residents to participate in PDMPS (Salgado Montes, 2017;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).Also, there are still challenges to facilitating meaningful feedback from local residents and ensuring that the local community has an influential voice in PDMPS decision-making processes (Hernández Bonilla, 2008;Alvarado Vazquez & Casiano Flores, 2022).
Fourth, in both cities, social participation, including bottom-up approaches in the PDMPS, became more visible.Local researchers discovered that local residents have explicitly influenced public policy through collective action and more visible citizen participation, bringing new policies that promote equity, equality, sustainability, and social awareness in the territory (Valeria & Abiel, 2021).Our literature review shows a broadening of social movements fighting for the defence of public spaces against gentrification processes, leading to the active participation of local residents in 9 of 16 boroughs of Mexico City (Gómez Carmona, 2018).Bottom-up approaches originated from the informal sector are another example of social organisations in the public spaces in Mexico City, which foster urban innovation and competitiveness in the economic development of the city (Lara-Hernandez et al., 2019, 2020).The involvement of local residents and other actors is also present in public space and public health issues, such as shown by the research made by the Ministry of Environment of Mexico City.The ministry uses a citizen science approach, to analyse sources of contamination that affect air quality in public spaces and proposed diverse channels of monitoring and evaluation involving society in the process (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de Mexico, 2021).
In the case of Puebla, the Municipal Planning Institute of Puebla (IMPLAN) included participatory processes as an incremental model in its most recent municipal development plan (2021-2024), which was developed through the input of 1,200 participants (Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2022).Currently, the IMPLAN is updating the new urban development program (2024-2028) until March 2023.They have developed 15 participatory workshops with different actors to collect their inputs for the new plan, implicitly including public spaces (Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2023).Also, local universities such as the Benemerita University of Puebla are involved with citizen science projects with local organisations and NGOs to improve public spaces.A study by Sánchez et al. (2020) exemplifies the use of 3D printed models of the historic centre of Puebla, which were later used in participatory processes with children with visual impairment to sensitise students about accessibility issues in the urban design process (Sánchez et al., 2020).Another example is the study by Ramírez Rosete et al. (2019), using an action research approach to understand the management of public spaces in the historic centre of Puebla and bring recommendations to the local authorities on promoting the appropriation of public spaces in the area (Ramírez Rosete et al., 2019).

Interviewed actors
We conducted semi-structured interviews with key actors directly involved in PDMPS.Interviewees were selected based on the commonly identified actors in the literature and previous public space research (Mandeli, 2010;Gehl & Svarre, 2013;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).We then focused on actors with professional experience and influence in PDMPS to gain insight into the social participation process.
Key groups of actors include the following: • Government: Federal and local institutions and agencies that attend to public space and promote participatory processes (Mandeli, 2010;United Cities and Local Governments, 2016).• Non-governmental organisations: These organisations focus on the local context and are usually formed by residents who share a common point of view and seek to solve a specific problem (Borja, 2011;Madanipour, 1999).We focused only on NGOs working on public space issues, where they represent residents and users, i.e. the bottom-up view.• Architecture/urban planning consultancy firms: They bid on public tenders or proposal, sometimes upon invitation by public institutions.Government bodies often do not have the technical or operational capacity to execute participatory projects and rely on external consultancies.These contracts sometimes include the development of participatory processes (Cuenya, 2009).• Academia: Local universities provide scientific knowledge about the local conditions and are invited to participate as consulting experts in the decision-making process (Gehl & Svarre, 2013;Ziccardi, 2012).Academia maintains regular contact with local residents through its research efforts and is often invited to participate in participatory processes (Alvarado Vazquez, 2017;Breuer et al., 2014).
Local residents were not explicitly included as we consider the NGOs selected to be representatives of local residents' views and interests since they directly engage and collect residents' feedback in participatory process.While NGOs generally aim to represent civil society as a whole, our chosen NGOs specifically focus on representing the interests of local residents, which is why we selected them in our case study.

Data collection and analysis
The main data collection method was semi-structured interviews.We conducted two stages of sampling.First, we used non-probability judgment sampling to identify actors with specific expertise or characteristics of interest.Secondly, snowball sampling was used to find referrals from experts who could contribute relevant information to our study (Kumar, 2011).These sampling techniques led to a list of actors involved in participatory process in the PDMPS, who referred us to other professionals working on public space issues.
The questions asked during the semi-structured interviews included topics related to definitions of: what is a public space, what are the participatory processes for the PDMPS being implemented, which actors participate in those processes, how is communication with social actors, and how are decisions made?An example of the questions asked during the interview can be seen in Appendix Figure A1.
Twenty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted in total.Nineteen between November 2019 and January 2020 and another two in August 2021.The interviews were administered, transcribed, and coded in Spanish, and selected portions were translated into English to provide illustrative quotes.The interviewer recorded twenty interviews (24 hours of audio recordings) and took extensive notes during one interview where the interviewee did not wish to be recorded (see Table A3 in Appendix).The interviews and fields notes were transcribed and corroborated through the audio recordings.Based on the transcripts, the data was organised in a spreadsheet according to the three dimensions of our analytical framework (section 3.3).

Analytical framework
The democracy cube by Fung (2006) was partially modified to reflect the specific research context and the literature review outcomes.The modification includes two main elements: (1) An adaptation of the participant dimension.The original framework established a set of predefined actors who were expected to be part of a participatory process.Our research simplifies this categorisation, allowing a more open involvement of stakeholders to better capture the diverse range of participants in participatory processes.This modification was triggered by Carmona et al. (2008) and Čolić et al. (2013), who discussed that a higher number of different stakeholders leads to higher levels of social participation, by virtue of including a wider range of perspectives.Additionally, in line with our literature review in the local context (Guillezeau, 2002;Angotti & Irazábal, 2017;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023) and empirical data obtained through our interviews with government practitioners, our modification allows us to place stakeholders that are participating in the PDMPS -as mentioned by our interviewees -along the participants axis.(2) We modified the dimension of the level of communication in the following way: we added 'no communication' as the lowest level of an ordinal intensity scale, followed by 'listen as spectator', 'express preferences', 'develop preferences' (co-creation), 'deliberate and negotiate', and 'deploy technical expertise'.We also consider the level of development preferences as a co-creation process, where two or more stakeholders share the action of ideating something (see Table A2 in the Appendix).This modification draws from insights from our literature review to locate and uncover the underlying reasons for persistent challenges, such as a lack of communication between government practitioners and local residents.Establishing effective communication channels is crucial to ensuring that residents have both a voice and influence in the PDMPS (Hernández Bonilla, 2008;Salgado Montes, 2017;Alvarado Vazquez & Casiano Flores, 2022).Given that participation is perceived as instrumental by local governments in Puebla and Mexico City, the significance of effective communication cannot be overstated in planning processes (Gómez Carmona, 2018;Congress of Mexico City, 2019;Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2022, 2023).
The original democracy cube has six levels of authority and power, and for our democracy diagram, they remain unaltered, ranging from least influential (lack of transparency) to most influential (decision-making), along the following ordinal arrangement (Arnstein, 1969;Fung, 2006): lack of transparency, informal, promoting, public consultation, collaborative planning and design, and decision-making.In our diagram, the lowest level means that information is not shared with the public and that there are no communication channels -the government retains full decision-making authority.At the highest level, all stakeholders provide technical expertise and a collaborative decision-making process is followed (see Figure 1).
In line with previous studies, our democracy diagram overlaps with the work of other participatory engagement studies.It particularly draws on Arnstein's (1969) ladder of participation, offering a model to measure the involvement of stakeholders in policy-making and decision-making processes, as well as on Fung's ( 2006) democracy cube, which has been used as a base for other participatory studies.As an example, the work of Sieber (2006) discusses different ways to involve and communicate with different stakeholders in participatory processes, ranging from a lot of facilitation to very little to no facilitation; and how they communicate in the policy- making process (Sieber, 2006).Haklay (2013) discusses the levels of participation from a citizen science perspective on volunteered geographic information, which is parallel to the work developed by other studies that aim to create higher levels of engagement between society and decision-makers (Sieber, 2006;Heikinheimo et al., 2020).The literature review shows that international organisations, such as the OECD (2015) and their proposed levels of stakeholder engagement elaborate on the engagement typologies from Arnstein (1696) and Fung (2006) for studies on water governance, societal challenges and planning practices (OECD, 2015).Our democracy diagram also aligns with existing studies that seek to analyse and identify interactions between residents and decision-makers in mobility safety planning, to identify participatory planning practices within community-based initiatives using ICTs in disaster management, and to identify the potential of social innovation in citizen observatories through digital participation in flood risk management (Pablo et al., 2013;Wehn & Evers, 2014;Cinderby et al., 2021).These studies are also based on Fung's democracy cube due to its ability to identify stakeholders to understand how participatory processes are being conducted and how they can be enhanced and influence decisionmaking.By further operationalising the Communication, Authority, and Power levels in our democracy diagram for the PDMPS in Mexico, our work expands on these existing studies.
In the next section, we explain our findings based on the categorised responses provided by our interviewees.We identified the various groups of stakeholders involved in the PDMPS and determined their level of communication and, authority and power of each group on the axes of our democracy diagram.

Stakeholders involved
According to the interviewees, we found eleven main stakeholders involved in PDMPS, which we classified into five groups (see Table 1).The stakeholders most often involved are the federal and local government institutions, as they oversee PDMPS in Mexico and usually are the institutions that fail to promote the involvement of local actors in participatory process.They are followed by social organisations such as local residents, resident councils and NGOs as the next most important group.The group of professionals, such as academics or professional associations, are in third place.The private sector has the fourth place, while international institutions were the least frequently mentioned (see Table 1).
According to our interviewees, the local government works more directly with citizens, and some government institutions encourage the creation of citizen councils.However, most of the time, those participating in citizen councils do not necessarily represent local needs as they have their own interests (interviews with local government practitioners and NGOs).Local government practitioners mentioned the need to improve the participatory process.Government participants mentioned that it is not common for communities to start a public space initiative (or at least they were unaware of such instances).In the case of Puebla, efforts have been made to improve public spaces in the city.Nevertheless, local government actors mentioned a lack of technical capacity to meet the social and monetary needs to develop public space projects and a lack of inter-institutional coordination.
A mobility corridor was promoted by the government, through social participation, we create awareness about the importance to improve sidewalks and explain to the government the benefits of improving them.(interview, Municipal Planning Institute of Puebla) NGOs do not build strong relationships with government institutions as this could be seen as suspect and spread distrust among local citizens, and when such relations exist, they are downplayed or not mentioned at all.NGOs and academics have the closest contact with local residents and social organisations, as they have a more positive presence within urban communities than the government.Architecture and urban planning consultancy companies interact extensively with government institutions, as the government hires them to develop public space projects.These consultancy firms must often complete the assigned activities with a low budget.Only one company mentioned trying to have participatory involvement with society, but just at a superficial level and local residents are rarely involved (interviews with architecture/urban planning companies).However, the main complaints of the private sector are the lack of budget to continue or finalise projects and that social participation is just an administrative tendering procedure without any relevance to the final project.Only one company mentioned that local residents were part of initiatives to improve communal public spaces, and only in high-income neighbourhoods, as they usually can afford to pay a private architecture firm (interview with an architecture/urban planning company in Puebla).
. . .some workshops had to be held according to the contract obtained with the government . . .several actors were involved such as public servants in the tourism area, businessmen and owners of the land, and usually in upper-middle class neighbourhoods.(Interview, consultancy company in Puebla) Not-for-profit professional associations are involved in PDMPS mainly through government practitioners at the federal and local levels, who request their expertise in direct consultations or commissioned studies.One NGO mentioned the presence of international organisations in Puebla as sponsors of public space projects and how they collaborate with the federal government via international agreements such as the New Urban Agenda of Habitat III.

Level of communication achieved
Organising the findings along the level of communication axis enabled the visualisation of how the interviewed actors perceive the levels of communication achieved in the processes of PDMPS (see Figure 2).Government institutions, by law, need to promote communication strategies with social organisations to inform them about the different actions, objectives and programmes to improve the urban environment.However, particularly for PDMPS, there is a generalised perception of an absence of communication from government institutions to social actors.Federal government actors mentioned that they are developing collaborative projects with social strategies; however, they recognise that more efforts are needed as they have less involvement with local residents.They usually reach a level of communication where they try to listen to local residents and other stakeholders on public space issues in participatory processes.Local governments are more in contact with local residents, social organisations and other stakeholders, but respondents also felt that participatory strategies need improvement.Local governments try to hear what social organisations and other stakeholders have to say in participatory processes, but they do not maintain continuous communication.
The selected NGOs focus their communication efforts on promoting or improving PDMPS from a bottom-up approach.Usually, they communicate with government institutions, as these provide a budget for their activities.The level of communication mentioned by our interviewees is in the level of expressed preferences.Local residents and other stakeholders, if invited to a participatory process, express their preferences in development plans or during the development of public space projects, sometimes giving insights about how to improve them.
We interviewed academics with experience in social participation and public spaces.Academics see themselves as a bridge between local residents and government decisionmakers, having more liberty and time to work on academic projects related to PDMPS.We found that academics are the actors who are more open to interact with other stakeholders but still are cautious about getting involved with government institutions.Moreover, they usually work on collaborative projects through their students' bachelor's or master's thesis projects.
Architecture/urban planning consultancy companies develop public space projects for public and private institutions and sometimes develop a participatory strategy as a contract prerequisite.Nevertheless, all mentioned that the inputs obtained through social organisations never achieve real impact in the final project and that the participatory processes are minimal.

Level of authority and power
Following the democracy cube dimension of the level of authority and power, Figure 3 shows the different levels found for the PDMPS in Mexico.Most interviewees reported that PDMPS processes rarely involve collaboration with actors from resident organisations.Most decision-making processes are usually left to government institutions.Federal government practitioners mentioned that, in practice, there is no direct interaction with local residents and that this task is usually delegated to local governments, academic institutions or well-known NGOs participating in government programs.
According to federal and local government, the level of authority and power is informing and consulting with residents organisations.By contrast, the other interviewed actors find that government institutions do not consult any residents or civil society organisations, and even when it does take place, it usually does not lead to a meaningful contribution and impact.Local government practitioners mentioned the need to include residents and other relevant stakeholders in PDMS decision-making processes.Sometimes, participation is related to the personal interests of a selected group of actors invited in decision-making processes (e.g.real estate companies or investors).
Through the lens of the democracy diagram, we observed that NGOs are not only trying to reach the levels of collaborative planning and design, but they are also attempting to bring awareness about the importance of using the local knowledge of local residents and social organisations in the PDMPS.Nevertheless, they struggle to achieve a decision-making level, as government institutions have the last word in public space planning and design phases.Academia mentioned that their influence is minimal; they usually give advice and inform social organisations and other stakeholders about PDMPS issues and solutions.Academics perceive that government institutions primarily work with the private sector; only reaching out to them for some sort of collaborative planning, design and decision-making process.
The architecture/urban planning companies mentioned that social participation for PDMPS does not consider residents' needs and aspirations, as there is a lack of social involvement.Government institutions usually hire companies and make the planning and design decisions.Often, NGOs and other actors do not have a say in decisionmaking.The interviewed companies said they consider social participation only if the government requests it as part of their contract.These companies usually develop master plans or public space projects based on official government requirements provided by government institutions.They admit that they neglect the needs or aspirations of local residents, and simulated participatory processes that do not have any impact on a final project are common.All actors mentioned that local residents are usually informed about public space projects after they have already been developed, never in the planning or design phase.It was also mentioned that private companies make decisions according to their own consideration and that local residents are not included in the planning, design, or maintenance stages.
Figure 4 shows all the groups of actors located within the democracy diagram in our case study.

Discussion
This paper focuses on the PDMPS through the lens of the democracy diagram (see Figure 4) to understand to what extent social participation is present in our case study cities.Our findings suggest that social participation in Mexico faces a series of challenges related to weak or absent social involvement, a generalised distrust of participatory processes, and poor communication between different stakeholders.The findings confirm observations from other Latin American and European contexts (Carmona et al., 2008;Zamanifard et al., 2018;Arango Cuartas & López Valencia, 2021).All four groups of domestic governance actors find that social participation should be enhanced.However, there are clear perception differences among the interviewed actors.
(1) All interviewed actors in both cities, except for government institutions, perceive a generalised lack of trust in government.
(2) In both cities, NGOs and academics lack trust in the private sector (Architecture/ urban planning companies and real estate developers).In their opinion, publicprivate partnerships develop public space projects with a focus on aesthetic designs but ignoring the functionalities that could enhance social interactions, and accommodate people's preferences through participatory processes.Some NGOs avoid working directly with government institutions as this creates distrust among residents due to the generalised lack of trust in the government.
(3) The private sector (architecture, urban planning and real estate consultancy companies) directly influences the PDMPS in both cities.Nevertheless, academics mentioned simulated participation processes, which government institutions do not supervise.

Representation and diversity of stakeholders
Governments worldwide have supported social participation according to international municipality organisations (United Cities and Local Governments, 2016; United Nations, 2017).However, our interviewees confirmed that this is only written on paper through laws or policies but not held in practice in the Mexican case.Government institutions, as part of their agenda, mention social participation has been recently promoted to create more transparent decision-making processes.In our case study, social participation is a buzzword present in discourses and legislation but not in final decision-making processes (Swyngedouw, 2005;Hernández Bonilla, 2012).Our interviewees mentioned that social participation in Mexico is related to political electoral processes, and this mode of participation has been traditionally promoted.A lack of commitment by government institutions to develop participatory process in the PDMPS is currently present.We found that this lack of commitment on the part of the government to involve society in PDMPS (see Appendix Table A1), is rooted in a traditionalist thought among residents and social organisations that regular citizens need to fight with the government and confront politicians to ensure that their needs are considered (Magdy, 2011;Hernández Bonilla, 2013).Nevertheless, according to our interviews with NGOs and Academics, when an opportunity for participation is presented, many people decide not to participate or get involved.Our literature review states that society's general representativeness is reduced, and the participants do not necessarily speak for the majority (Boonstra, 2015;Hordijk et al., 2015;Iwinska, 2017).This issue also concerns a lack of social visibility and awareness (Alawadi & Dooling, 2016).
Several efforts need to be made to create more social representation in the PDMPS and promote social involvement.A negligible share of the population (0.40%) works in the civil society sector, including NGOs or other social institutions working on urban issues, especially compared with countries like the Netherlands (12%).Social changes need to be promoted through policies that empower activism and provide solid incentives for its creation and development (Ablanedo, 2009;Chávez & González, 2018).Nevertheless, residents and civil society organisations are increasingly becoming more aware of the importance of their local knowledge, and enhanced levels of activism are noted among local residents.As Gómez Carmona (2018) mentions, there is a broadening of active participation, usually organised to protect and keep in good conditions the public spaces left due to urban sprawl, as in the case of Mexico City (Gómez Carmona, 2018).Especially NGOs and academics institutions have mentioned that they have seen an important growth of independent movements to improve the conditions of public spaces, which also relates to worldwide trends such as placemaking or tactical urbanism (Lydon et al., 2012;Boonstra, 2015).At the local scale, our case study findings show that in Mexico, several organisations are trying to revert the lack of involvement through bottom-up approaches in the PDMPS (Asociación Nacional de Parques y Recreación A. C, 2018;Lara-Hernandez et al., 2020;Sánchez et al., 2020).NGOs are the actor with the deepest involvement with residents and social organisations.NGOs working on public space issues focus their efforts on collecting the preferences of residents, but due to lack of resources, they seldom reach higher levels of communication.

Communication
Different communication channels are used to promote participatory processes and enhance public acceptance (see Figure 3).For example, the government and NGOs have used digital communication channels like official websites or social media.The IMPLAN used this strategy to invite participants through the official website and Facebook to attend a series of workshops in Puebla for the latest municipal development plan (2021-2024) (Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2022).However, our findings show that government institutions at the federal and local levels do not have open channels for continuous and reciprocal communication that would allow residents and social organisations to take part in decision-making processes.This contrasts with our literature review, where communication supports mutual learning and collaboration to improve planning practices (Healey, 1997;Smaniotto et al., 2019;Christmann et al., 2020).NGOs, academics, and architecture/urban planning consultancy companies mentioned an apparent lack of interaction with residents and simulated participatory processes using social media platforms.According to Pablo et al. (2013), when there is simulated participation or lack of communication among different stakeholders in participatory process, the views or aspirations of participants never reach a level of consideration in the final decisions of the PDMPS (Pablo et al., 2013).Government institutions and research studies already mentioned the presence of communication channels with stakeholders in participatory planning processes (Giner et al., 2019;Ipiña & Peña, 2021; Secretaria de Medio Ambiente de la Ciudad de Mexico, 2021; Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2022).However, in our study, we can confirm the persistence of challenges previously mentioned in earlier studies in Mexico City and Puebla (De Alba-Ulloa & Arellanes- Arellanes, 2017;Ramírez Rosete et al., 2019;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023), such as, the lack of trust, lack of information and collective awareness, and insufficient lack of inclusive design based on local resident outputs (Magdy, 2011;Hernández Bonilla, 2012;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).The communication channels in Mexico still do not allow residents or civil society organisations to participate in a collaborative process to improve PDMPS; only academics are involved in co-creation, mainly on their own initiative.

Authority and power
Regarding the impact of social participation in PDMPS, government institutions are the main decision-makers in public space projects.In the ideal scenario, decision-making power would be shared with civil society organisations and other stakeholders throughout the planning process (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004).The activism promoted by NGOs and academics lends a voice to broader societal needs.These organisations are trying to consider the residents' local knowledge and transform social organisations from observers to active agents in the PDMPS, which aligns with the vision of enhancing social participation and considering the knowledge of local residents mentioned in our literature review (Hanzl, 2007;Cruickshank & Coupe, 2013;Pfeffer et al., 2015).Nevertheless in practice, it is uncommon to consider the perspective of social actors.Although the exclusion and disempowerment of residents lacking legal representation or support from political representatives are a worldwide issue (Swyngedouw, 2005), Mexico has only 33 NGOs per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the more than 600 in the US or Chile (Ablanedo, 2009;Chávez & González, 2018).The lack of involvement of local residents and the apathy of decision makers to include social organisations in the PDMPS, creates a scenario of low social representativity.

Differences between the case studies
The two case study also had a few notable differences.The Mexico City government had more resources focused on participatory approaches for PDMPS than Puebla's.Unsurprisingly, Mexico City also had more experience in creating and communicating government initiatives on participatory processes in PDMPS.For example, the recently abolished Laboratory of Mexico City and the Ministry of Public Space of Mexico City developed participatory processes to improve the conditions of public spaces (Gülgönen, 2016;Marrades, 2019) or the presence of active social movements fighting for the defence of public spaces (Gómez Carmona, 2018).In Puebla, only the municipal planning institution has tried to use different communication channels with citizens on planning issues (Instituto Municipal de Planeacion, 2021; Gobierno Municipal de Puebla, 2023).
Academics and NGOs mentioned that the political stability of Mexico City, ruled by a left-leaning political party for more than 25 years, has facilitated policy continuity in PDMPS and the communication of initiatives and projects (Paramo, 2017).On the other hand, Puebla has a history of switching political parties with neoliberal policies.This has promoted solid relationships with the private sector, particularly with the real estate sector, where local academics mention how public space projects are concentrated in high-income neighbourhoods, like the Angelopolis area (See Figure 5), while leaving marginalised urban areas abandoned (Hofmann Aguirre, 2012;Navarro et al., 2017).

Conclusion
This paper aimed to understand how social participation is included in PDMPS in Mexico.We adapted Fung's (2006) democracy cube as an analytical framework to analyse how social participation is included in PDMPS.Through interviews, we examined the perception of four groups of actors (government, NGOs, architecture/urban planning consultancy firms, and academia) on social participation in PDMPS.The modification of Fung's approach, which we named 'democracy diagram', helped reveal the degree of diversity of stakeholders involved in participatory processes and visualise the participation challenges in our case study.
The findings uncover: (1) a lack of participatory processes that include a diversity of stakeholders; (2) there are efforts to create new channels of communication between stakeholders, but the local knowledge of social organisations is still not considered; and (3) civil society organisations did not reach a level of power where their inputs are part of the decision-making processes.At the intra-government level, there is still (4) a lack of support for participatory processes, (5) local residents and other social actors are not involved in participatory processes; and (6) implementing participatory methods throughout the PDMPS phases is not observed in practice by federal and local governments.
Based on our findings, we argue that social participation in PDMPS needs a broader representation in urban planning, allowing a wider representation of diverse stakeholders and local residents to participate in decision-making processes.To do so, we observed, that it is necessary to implement methodological mechanisms that allow broader communication channels with local residents and stakeholders.
Our findings contribute to debates on social participation in urban governance issues, particularly in public space management (Carmona et al., 2008;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).Our research reveals weak participation in urban governance issues at the neighbourhood level.Also, it contributes to the scientific body of knowledge on social participation in urban planning and design, specifically in the debates weighing topdown vs bottom-up decision-making, where political decisions and institutional interests neglect the interests and needs of the users of the public space (Carmona et al., 2008;Delgadillo, 2018;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).A major methodological contribution is made through the democracy diagram, which allows the impact of social participation in PDMPS to be situated.It provides a generic structuring device to understand the links between three different axes (number of diverse participants, level of communication, and the decision-making power achieved), helping to elicit avenues to strengthening participation processes in PDMPS and applicable to other social participation questions.Planning and urban design practitioners could use it to analyse the resources and ambitions of social actors and to improve participatory processes.It can also serve as a reference for replicating our approach in countries with similar conditions, arrangements and challenges, such as Chile, Colombia and India (Delamaza, 2011;Barrera & Pacheco, 2016;Swapan, 2016).
The limitations of this research include: (i) resident's participation should not be generalised based on two case studies.A larger sample from more cities and focusing on specific projects that considered citizen's participation could provide additional insights into the challenges of the Mexican context.(ii) The study did not directly include local residents' perceptions; instead, we interviewed NGOs as civil society representatives.Nevertheless, a further study including the residents' point of view could bring more specific details of their involvement in PDMPS in our case studies.(iii) With the help of our local network and interviewees, we drafted a list of experts knowledgeable about public space in the local context from the different groups of actors, aiming at least to interview two actors for each group to include different perspectives; unfortunately, not all listed actors were available for interviews.(iv) Our semi-structured interviews took place during a change of Mexico's national government for the period (2018-2024) since every six years, there is a change of government, coinciding with local governments such as in Puebla and Mexico City.This included changes in the structure of some government agencies related to PDMPS.Given this, key persons who would have been aware of social participation initiatives might have been replaced and inadvertently omitted from our research, acknowledging that some relevant actors may have been overlooked in our study.
Further research could explore broader case study areas at a national level.Political differences between the different levels of government could have influenced interviewee responses since this research was carried out in the middle of the transition period (2018)(2019)(2020)(2021)(2022)(2023)(2024) at the federal government level.The involvement of international stakeholders should also be considered in future research as they seem to be important actors in PDMPS, as seen in Table 1.Also, further research could analyse which techniques and technologies can be used in participatory processes by practitioners and if existing applications have proven in creating new communication channels or giving more power to social actors.Earlier studies have emphasised the need to develop a mixture of more interactive, participatory methods to engage with society from a bottom-up perspective (Brynskov et al., 2014;van Leeuwen et al., 2018;Alvarado Vazquez et al., 2023).An example is MIT's Centre for Civic Media or the Rotterdam Open Data Community, initiatives that create digital tools for local communities to collect and visualise data, giving them a voice in decision-making (Brynskov et al., 2014).Alternatively, participatory cartography has been used to produce maps representing public space issues in local communities via geographic information systems (Boll-Bosse & Hankins, 2018).A combination of methodologies, fields and technologies could operationalise the aspirations and needs of residents, enabling their involvement in planning public space interventions.The result would be cities that are finely attuned to their inhabitants.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Level of communication in PDMPS in Mexico.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Level of authority and power in PDMPS in Mexico.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Democracy diagram for social participation in PDMPS with located actors.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Public spaces in the Angelopolis area in Puebla.Source: Author, photograph taken in January 2019.

Figure A1 .
Figure A1.Example of the questions made during the semi structured interviews to an academic in Puebla, 2019.

Table 1 .
Overview of stakeholders involved in PDMPS.

Table A2 .
Synonyms and definitions of social participation.

Table A3 .
Actors interviewed during fieldwork in Mexico.