Terezie Lokšová: Public Participation in Czech Cities: Democratic Deficit and the Monolithic West

Cities are particularly well suited for the creation, spread and implementation of various methods presented as expert and innovative. These typically aim to support urban development, improve municipal government or raise the standard of living in the city, at least for some of its residents. You may have heard of smart cities, creative cities or participatory development. In general, these are formal strategies that should be advanced by local governments, public-private partnerships or experts in the field.

These techniques are usually developed for specific reasons in specific cities. As they become known as innovations and/or best practice models, they are written into manuals and passed into different contexts—they do not stay the same (Montero and Baiocchi 2022). In order to spread and be applicable in different locations, they must transform while keeping enough of a universal form. 

Therefore, the instructions and techniques these innovations bring frequently seem universal, as if they had no specific origin and were broadly applicable. They give the impression of neutral, practical advice. For example, the premise of participation is rather simple: in order for people to have better lives in the city they live in, they need to be more involved in its design. However, these expert solutions, formal instruments and best practice examples are not neutral. Even though they change as they enter different contexts, numerous features from their place of origin, including their values, remain embedded within them. This means that their framing of the central problem and potential solutions may differ from the needs and possibilities of the place to which they have been transferred. This affects which aspects of local life are considered relevant, what is taken into account and what is put aside, for instance, practices which function in the city on an informal basis.

In the cities of Central and Eastern Europe, this can be seen particularly clearly in the spread of one particular innovation: top-down public participation. Public participation here refers to the invited involvement of residents in transforming a local area, for instance, revitalising a park or square or designing a new residential area.

In the Czech context, involving the public has been a practice dating back to the late 1950s. Residents participated in debates on housing developments (Musil, Poláčková 1962; Novotná 2021) and various other projects, as documented by architectural historians. People participated in the creation of playgrounds (Brůhová 2021) and took part in a survey and the ensuing debate on the expansion of the Old Town Hall in Prague (Guzik 2020).

However, after 1989, people did not build directly on these experiences. Nonprofit and service organisations and foundations became leading advocates of what they saw as an innovative idea to involve the public. They cooperated with experts from the United States and Great Britain, conducted the first training activities and realised and implemented their first projects in Czech cities and towns in cooperation with local activists and governments. When codifying public participation in various manuals or during training and conferences, emphasis was placed on the discontinuity and novelty of this innovation coming from Western democracies. However, this approach does not address the fact that the relationships between urban design experts and residents did not begin with the expansion of new techniques on a greenfield, so to speak. Hubert Guzik (2020) demonstrates how the intense public response to the competition for the potential expansion of the Old Town Hall in Prague transformed and exacerbated the relationship of many architects towards the attitudes of lay people. 

Another aspect of importing formal innovations from abroad is the framing they bring. This framing, namely that of a democratic deficit, is not only present in manuals promoting public participation but is also advocated for by some promoters of participation. It also appears in academic reflections on Central and Eastern Europe (for example, Pascaru and Ana Buţiu 2010; Akmentiņa 2020, and others). The idea is that CEE societies are, for historical reasons, insufficiently democratic and lag behind Western democracy. They can, however, “catch up” (on this assumption, see Ferenčuhová 2012). There is talk of a lack of trust, inadequate competence and capacity among local governments and citizens themselves. The organised involvement of residents is presented as the answer: public participation as an educational tool to teach democracy. Manuals focus mainly on educating local governments on how to act towards their citizens, while academic literature advocates for the importance of focusing on citizens and their ability to participate (e.g., Poljak Istenič and Kozina 2020).

It is perhaps not surprising that as a consequence of this framing, the West, as viewed through the lens of these attempts at democratisation, appears to be somewhat mythical—a monolith stripped of its local history, current specifics, variations in governance and cultural expectations across countries and cities. This perspective is further reinforced in academic publications, which tend to treat theories based on research from Western metropolises as universal. In contrast, research originating in the rest of the world is often interpreted as “a special case” or “coming from different circumstances”. This approach to cases beyond the West is a much-debated consequence of inequalities in knowledge production. In CESCAME, Slavomíra Ferenčuhová (2016) and Petr Jehlička (2021) both addressed this topic.

Within the “cities of the West”, there are various models of administration, distinct local histories and differences in the usual methods of interaction between local government representatives, experts and citizens. The innovations created in these cities reflect their specific arrangements and are not homogeneous. Jenkins et al. (2010) demonstrate how public participation projects in the United States and the United Kingdom differed substantially depending on whether the primary objective was to create a good design or empower local residents, meaning they were based on different political and professional approaches. 

What is the situation in Czech cities when it comes to public participation? If we did not build on projects implemented before 1989, where did we get the tools for involving the public? Who brought them forward and how? What were the goals of the pioneers of participatory development? Were these goals achieved? What do they look like now?

The answers can be put simply: With exceptions, tools for public participation were brought into the country by local nonprofit and service organisations. They were partially funded by grants aimed mostly at creating or supporting local communities and at teaching residents new ways of cooperating while also implementing a small-scale project, such as a square, a park or a pathway. However, these projects were not entering a vacuum. As one of the public participation pioneers mentioned in a research interview, residents of smaller towns were sometimes confused as to why they were being told to engage people in community works when they had been doing it for years, for example, when repairing the local fire station.

Furthermore, imported approaches also impact how the role of the architect and the expectations of the project outcome are perceived. Different approaches respond differently to key questions; for example, what is important about the final outcome? Is it functionality? Architectural originality? The relationships forged in the process of creation? Seeing public participation as an “educational tool to teach democracy” means the primary emphasis is put on relationships and the engagement of people or on the relationships between citizens and public administration. Reflections on the profession of the architect and their role may be a part of the participation activity, but the professional practices and the resulting physical form of the project are not the primary focus.

In my research, I investigate these public participation approaches, how they entered the Czech environment, where they came from and what led to their gradual adoption. I focus on how the rhetorically new approach to urban design in the late 1990s constructed and reinforced discontinuities between the prior practices present in the cities of former Czechoslovakia and the present.

Published 3. 5. 2023

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