Organic planning: A new approach to public participation in local governance

In the past few years, a new form of citizen-oriented policy deliberation has emerged. Often using the concept of “visioning” as a vehicle, efforts have been carried out to foster citizen discussions regarding the desired future of a community, region, or jurisdiction. The future orientation of such deliberations allows for a wide array of issues and concerns to be identified and acted upon in a developmental format. This paper seeks to draw some generalizations from this new phenomena. We argue that this is a new form of citizen participation that builds upon, but is distinct from, previous citizen participation practices and models. We call this new variant organic planning.