Summary: | "Public and stakeholder participation has become an expected part of much bureaucratic decision making. Urban and regional planning, in particular, is now widely perceived as a set of discursive practices involving actors from a range of different lifeworlds. However, planning research has so far paid little attention to the language used in such practices." "This book introduces the methodology of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to the study of participatory planning. Using text-analytical methods, it closely examines the talk between participants in two formal stakeholder committees over five years, during which time they went through several phases of changing power dynamics, conflict and reconciliation. In doing so, the book develops conceptual tools for studying the 'formal talk' of participatory planning committees. It also sheds light on the dynamics of interaction between 'stakeholders' and bureaucracies, particularly with respect to communicative barriers, power inequalities, and the emergence of situated discursive practices."--Jacket
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