Active citizen participation in the drafting of Master Urban Plans of major Spanish cities

Abstract

In response to the growing interest of governments in involving citizens in public policies, this paper studies the degree of citizen participation in the revision of master urban plans during the last 20 years in the 25 most populated Spanish municipalities. For this purpose, the documentation available on the Internet portals of the city councils and in the online newspaper library has been analyzed. The objective is to determine the degree of citizen involvement in municipal planning. Since 2001, of the 25 cities analyzed, 18 have drawn up or are in the process of developing a new urban plan, and 12 have applied or plan to apply additional participation on top of the minimum legal requirement. This finding evidences a considerable effort by these municipal administrations to actively involve their citizens in the revision of their plans beyond what is required by law.

Keywords

• urban planning policies
• citizen participation
• master urban plan
• urban legislation
• spanish cities