Fuzzy participatory planning processes as arenas for collaborative learning

Half a century of experiments in participatory spatial planning make clear that participatory planning and (political) decision making are in a fuzzy relationship, with both aspiring to different goals, thriving in different conditions and adhering to different rationales. This paper adopts the argument that one way out of this fuzziness is to approach the interaction of participatory planning and decision making as one process of collaborative learning. We explore the implications of this approach on the basis of an analysis of three participatory-planning cases.