Democratic Planning Forum: Uncovering latent planning capacities in Vienna

Efforts toward socio-ecological transformation are currently hindered by two structural conditions in the present political context: a lack of state coordination capacity and insufficient democratic participation in political decision-making. While the climate crisis clearly demonstrates the need for strategic planning and long-term governance, many public institutions lack the necessary capacities to act effectively and democratically. The consequences are growing distrust in public institutions, the strengthening of regressive ideologies, and an escalating crisis of democratic legitimacy. The renewed debate on questions of democratic planning highlights that socio-ecological transformation requires new and innovative forms of collective and democratic shaping rather than technocratic steering.

The Democratic Planning Forum addresses precisely this challenge. Its goal is to make visible existing but underutilized capacities for democratic planning in the City of Vienna and to bring together actors from public administration (e.g. urban development and spatial planning, environmental protection), trade unions (e.g. ÖGB, Vienna Chamber of Labour), civil society (e.g. Local Agenda 21), and research institutions (e.g. the Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations, the Centre for Public Administration Research) in order to discuss how these capacities can be activated at the urban level. The regional focus on the city level is understood as an entry point for making planning capacities visible. The region is the scale at which most everyday activities take place and where processes of change (in mobility, settlement structures, and energy provision) become spatially embedded and directly tangible. This makes the regional level a privileged scale for civil society participation. Through the Democratic Planning Forum, the Future Histories LAB seeks to create an experimental format that demonstrates how planning can connect democratic participation and state capacity to act.

The Democratic Planning Forum consists of three project components:

Exploratory mapping of existing planning capacities: A brief exploratory analysis will identify and make visible existing forms of democratic planning within the Vienna city administration as well as related civil society initiatives (e.g. Grätzllabore). Institutional practices, participatory formats, and organizational structures that already contain elements of planning but remain fragmented or insufficiently visible will be identified.

In qualitative interviews with practitioners, these planning capacities will then be discussed in greater depth. What do existing approaches have in common? Where does hidden, underutilized potential lie? How is this potential currently being blocked? How can planning capacities be brought together rather than coexist in a fragmented manner? How can they be scaled up? The interviews will engage perspectives from public administration, trade unions, civil society, and research in order to reflect on, expand, and discuss the findings of the exploratory mapping, and to explore how existing participatory formats might be transformed into more durable forms of democratic planning.

The central findings of the research will be compiled in a short discussion paper, which will serve as a basis for future workshops, further academic work, policy-oriented activities, and public communication. The participants will also be able to bring the paper into their respective institutions. It will summarize the key substantive insights as well as reflections on the methodological approach of the Democratic Planning Forum.

The discussion paper produced through the project can serve as a shared foundation for the further development of democratic planning approaches at the urban level. At the same time, the project creates a basis for future research and practice-oriented initiatives that engage more deeply with the institutional preconditions of democratic planning in the context of socio-ecological transformation. In the longer term, the work of the Forum could provide the foundation for experimental “real-world laboratories” in which the working group’s findings are tested and implemented within the city administration.

Democratic Planning Forum is a project that aims to make visible the existing but underutilized capacities for democratic planning in the city of Vienna.

Funded by the Otto Brenner Stiftung