Sidelining citizens when deciding on transport projects is asking for trouble

摘要

Citizen engagement is, or should be, central to city planning. When it comes to planning and implementing transport infrastructure the focus tends to be on how to engage the public, when to engage, and what form this should take. But we should be asking another, more important question: how can citizen engagement make infrastructure planning more democratic? In many cases proposed transport infrastructure and the conflicts and debates it provokes are actually about much more than the project proposal. If the project is a new light rail system, for instance, the questions are: Who and what will it serve? What will it look like? And what impacts, positive and negative, will it have on the city over time?