Beyond engagement theatre: challenging institutional constraints of participatory planning practice

Institutional realities often limit participatory planning practice from reaching its full potential. Rather than continuing to improve participatory approaches and methods in isolation, we studied whether there is merit in extending the repertoire of planning knowledge and skills to encompass a focus on the broader institutional decision-making processes. By interviewing a diverse range of experts working in the Queensland planning context, the research sought to understand different types of clashes between participatory planning practices and institutional cultures. Interviewees shared their personal experiences and strategies that helped them traverse institutional processes and constraints. This confirmed that there is already a wealth of tacitly held skills, which have not yet been formalised. Our data analysis found that planning practice may be improved by attenuating the disparity between external messaging and internal practices, and by enabling planning practitioners to better utilise informal institutional structures. Intermediation is proposed as a skillset to formalise planners’ tacitly held interpersonal and political literacy and acumen, and equip them to better navigate and negotiate institutional structures and constraints