Marginalizing Public Participation in Local Planning: An Ethnographic Account

Abstract

Abstract Abstract The importance of public consultation and participation in local planning is acknowledged by the planning profession in the United States, yet anthropological research on the practice of planning in western North Dakota boomtowns during the 1980s reveals that the institutional procedures and formal apparatus of planning work to enforce dominant bureaucratic forms of organization, ideology, and discourse in ways that marginalize other ones. Although efforts and mechanisms to involve residents in planning were in place, local voices were accorded less authority when they used local conventions of negotiation and rhetoric. This paper argues for greater cultural sensitivity in matters of power and communication in planning practice.