Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning and Development: Learning from Indonesian Cities

Kota Kita proposes a tools-and-facilitation-skills training for civil society organizations and activists on how to foster inclusiveness and enable a more informed and active citizen participation in urban planning and development. This set of knowledge and skills will support the implementation of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) guidelines in the development of cities and work towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the community level.

Citizen participation is a core and decisive element for governmental decision-making processes, as it strengthens democracy, enables more inclusiveness of different populations' needs and wants, and increases public accountability, effectiveness, and transparency. Participation in planning is crucial for achieving SDGs in general, but especially the numbers 10 and 11, as only through the inclusion and engagement of all citizens, including the under-represented, disenfranchised, and often excluded segments of society - such as women and girls, persons with disabilities and elderly, and the urban poor - it is truly possible to reduce inequalities and produce sustainable cities and communities.

Kota Kita has developed a methodology and set of actions aiming to foster participation, which can be learned as three major skills: participatory data collection, data visualization, and urban data analysis. These are some basic skills that would benefit, particularly civil society organizations, NGOs, community facilitators, government officials, or those who have vision to improve the development process in the city together with well-informed and empowered citizens.

The skills allow practitioners to see participation and inclusion as process; they provide one with tools for listening, also collaborative tools to analyse, and finally designing the solution.

Kota Kita will deliver the training using ' Participatory Approaches in Urban Planning and Development Toolkit' and using examples from good practices from some of our most emblematic, award-winning community improvement projects in Indonesian cities. Later, through the three-sessions training, we will be teaching and sharing experiences for capacity-building of: (a) skills on how to collect data through a participatory process; (b) skills on how to conduct consultative and participative data analyses on urban issues; and (c) skills on visualizing the information to be used for collaborative solution design.