Innovative Methods for Social Participation in Land-Use Planning – Democratising Local Decision-Making?

Citizen participation is enshrined in the Norwegian Planning and building Act, and was accentuated in the 2008-revision. As a result, a wide range of innovative methods for social participation in land use planning has emerged, for example several GIS-based methods (like Children’s tracks, Senior tracks etc). In this article, we discuss the arguments for including these methods from collaborative planning perspectives, and also different arguments based on representative local democracy perspectives. Thus, our aim is to illuminate the different democratic arguments for channeling citizen input into planning, and critically discuss the contribution and limitations of new, popular involving methods in land-use planning.