Reimagining Public Participation in Urban Development
Insights from Bramfischerville, Johannesburg
Katrin Hofer (ETH Zurich)
Public participation is widely regarded as a cornerstone of democratic urban governance. Around the world, governments and planners have embraced participatory practices to involve residents in decisions that shape their cities. Yet much of the academic and policy discourse continues to frame participation as a state-led process, where the public is invited by government actors to engage in predetermined formats designed to improve plans, policies, and projects. These conventional understandings are shaped by a focus on institutional design and technical outcomes. Meanwhile, less attention is paid to how participation is actually understood by those it is meant to empower.
In my recent Urban Affairs Review article, I explore this gap through a case study of Bramfischerville, a low-income neighborhood northwest of Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa. The research draws on eight months of fieldwork, including group interviews with residents, a survey with 502 participants, and key informant interviews with government officials and community leaders. It examines how ordinary urban residents conceptualize participation. The findings reflect culturally and contextually embedded understandings that challenge dominant theories portraying participation as a top-down, state-driven process with predefined roles for the public. Instead, they call for rethinking participation through the lens of situated knowledge, lived experience, and collaboratively shaped democratic practices.
Divergence in understanding emerges along three key dimensions: the why, who, and how of participation. These insights are summarized in the table below and discussed in the following sections.
Participation is about relationships, not just results
For residents of Bramfischerville, participation is not primarily about achieving a specific policy goal or addressing one issue at a time. It is about broader poverty alleviation, gaining recognition, and building trust. Participation is a way to be seen, and residents express a strong desire to be recognized and respected as full members of society. They seek to be treated by the government as valuable and worthy of time, effort, and resources. Participation is not a one-off event but a partnership with leaders. Residents want to be informed, involved, and included in existing processes.
This understanding stands in contrast to dominant theories that portray participation as a top-down process focused on technical outcomes. In Bramfischerville, participation is envisaged as a dynamic negotiation rooted in everyday realities and shaped by the desire for stronger relationships between people and the state.
Participation on their terms
In the conventional understanding, participation is initiated by the state, with citizens invited to engage in predefined ways. In Bramfischerville, however, residents challenge this assumption. They believe that everyone—government officials, community members, and informal leaders—should be able to initiate engagement. Participation is not limited to invited spaces. It should also include spaces created by the community itself.
And they already do this. When formal channels fail, residents create their own. They blow whistles to call meetings at the street level. They write letters. They block projects until they get answers. They invite the government to meet them on their terms. These practices reflect a more inclusive and decentralized view of who participates and who sets the agenda.
Participation is continuous interaction
Rather than being structured and linear, participation in Bramfischerville is fluid and ongoing. It is not tied to a single process or format. Residents engage through various, often simultaneous, forms of interaction: formal meetings, informal gatherings, protests, and everyday conversations with local leaders. They prefer regular face-to-face encounters and emphasize the importance of being heard consistently, not only during election cycles. And when formal channels fail, they organize, protest, and fix problems themselves.
Despite frustration, 81 percent of residents said they would participate if given the chance. But they want more than a seat at the table. They want to know when the table is set. Many said they were not informed about meetings or did not understand the processes. They asked for pamphlets, loud-hailing, radio, and social media. They asked for language that makes sense—not just in terms of technical terms and procedures, but in ways that connect policy content to their everyday realities.
Residents do not just want to influence decisions. They want government officials to show up, to listen, and to explain. They want feedback, honesty, and transparency, even when the answer is “not yet.” As one resident put it, “Improvements won’t happen overnight. We know that. But they should at least come and give us feedback.”
Why this matters for urban governance
Across South Africa and in many other parts of the world, governments are struggling to deliver services, build trust, and engage citizens meaningfully. Participation is often reduced to a checkbox—an obligation rather than a dialogue. When participation feels hollow, people disengage. But when it feels empowering, it can transform communities.
The experience of Bramfischerville offers important lessons. Participation should be:
Inclusive: it involves everyone.
Interactive: face-to-face dialogue matters and is seen as a way to hold leaders accountable.
Co-designed: residents want a say in how participation is structured.
Relational: trust is built through consistency, transparency, and respect.
Contextually grounded: participation must reflect local needs and realities.
While rooted in Johannesburg, these insights speak to a global challenge: how to make participation meaningful. The findings suggest that participation must be reimagined not as a technical fix, but as a practice grounded in situated knowledge, shaped through dialogue, and built on shared responsibility. They invite reflection across contexts and suggest that participatory spaces should be co-designed through negotiation among all involved actors. This would be a meaningful step toward embedding diverse forms and understandings of participation in urban governance.
Katrin Hofer is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in the Spatial Development and Urban Policy Research Group at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development, ETH Zurich. This article draws on her doctoral dissertation on public participation in urban development. Her research interests include urban development planning, public participation, southern urban theory, housing, urban inequalities, feminist planning, and urban informality. She employs both qualitative and quantitative methods in her work.