Participace v českých městech jako zdroj podnětů pro urbánní plánování: hranice a očekávání

Top-down involvement of residents in urban development represents a fairly established practice in Czech cities. Participation is usually provided by multidisciplinary teams, participation consultants or urban planners themselves. How urban planners are involved in shaping the space for the participation and how they continue to work with the outputs of participation has so far remained outside the scope of professional debates. The possibility to influence the plan is crucial for the residents to motivate them to participate: it is, therefore, important to reflect on this dimension of professional work as well and not to leave it out of attention [compare Eriksson et al., 2021]. The study draws on two sources of data collected between 2014-2022: interviews with urban planners who engage residents in their own capacities and content analysis of media coverage of Czech participatory projects. Through these, it contributes to understanding as well as creates space for reflection on the epistemic cultures of urban planning [Knorr-Cetina, 1999; Kurath, 2015]: established and usually tacit methodologies, tools, processes and forms of interaction with residents. The research shows that residents are perceived in participatory processes mainly as bearers of individual needs, which are usually related to their demographic characteristics, while distinctions by class, ethnicity, etc. are missing. The legitimacy of participation is based on the fact that the planned project should affect the participants who live, work or are otherwise active in the location. If the organization of participation is motivated by an interest in information, planners subsequently treat it more intuitively. The relevance of the information gathered is based primarily on the longer-term relationship with the location (information about seasonal functioning and the past) and on the concept of needs (information about the personal values and preferences of residents). At the same time, there are more or less fixed limits to what can be contributed. Apart from the fact that they tend to be set by pre-negotiated parameters of the project (where residents are not involved in defining), they do not allow lay participants to seek solutions. Informants do not seek to create consensus; rather, they seek to obtain a wide range of information and subsequently examine often conflicting data. Urban planners see themselves as experts on complexity and the future, with ambitions for individuality and originality of projects, while the information gathered through participation serves more or less to prioritise sub-problems, fill in predictable blank spaces or enrich a project.

Zapojování obyvatel do územního rozvoje je v praxi již poměrně zavedené. V českém prostředí participaci zpravidla zajišťují multidisciplinární týmy, konzultanti nebo samotní urbanisté. To, jak se urbanisté na formování prostoru pro participaci podílejí a jak s výstupy zapojení dál pracují, zůstává doposud stranou odborného zájmu, zatímco pro obyvatele je možnost záměr ovlivnit stěžejní motivací k účasti. Studie založená na rozhovorech s urbanisty zapojujícími obyvatele v rámci svých vlastních kapacit a obsahové analýze mediálního pokrytí českých participativních projektů nabízí výchozí bod k porozumění a reflexi epistemické kultury českých urbanistů: ukazuje, že přizvaní obyvatelé jsou chápáni především jako nositelé individuálních potřeb (odpovídajících demografickým kategoriím) a zdroj každodenních, sezonních a dlouholetých zkušeností s řešeným místem, popř. relativně nahodilé inspirace.