Are you interested in implementing public-private-people partnerships in your city? Baltic Urban Lab has published a new working paper "Paper Public–Private–People Partnerships in Urban Planning" prepared by Nordregio that discusses the potentials and challenges public-private-people partnerships can bring in urban planning and development with a particular attention paid to public-private-people partnership (4P) approaches in regards to brownfield regeneration – the focus of Baltic Urban Lab.
The Working Paper also gives practical examples of how cities can succesfully involve various actors in their planning processes.
The concept of public–private–people partnership - what do we actually mean when we talk about 4P approaches?
Public–private–people partnership is a new concept in urban planning, establishing new ways to improve the inclusion of various public sector actors, private actors, residents, NGOs and other civil-society actors in planning processes. In an age of decreasing public finances, inclusion of actors outside the public planning organisations is seen as increasingly important for reaching planning goals in an efficient manner, by pooling resources and sharing risks.
The inclusion of variety actors in the same process is a challenge. However, adaptation of 4P approach has the potential to address the lack of transparency and legitimacy. Often, private actors and the general public are included in separate processes, but 4P approaches may have the potential to bridge the gap between partnerships and participation.
Public-private partnerships are important especially in brownfield development. It is difficult for municipalities to redevelop brownfields without strategic alliances with other actors, due to the complexity of the process and limited public finances. Public-private partnerships have been useful for brownfield development also because it can be a way to have a more comprehensive perspective of the development of the site instead of individual landowners making their own interventions. Bringing the fourth “P” in the process – people, has the potential to increase transparency of the planning process and helps to understand the needs of the end users of the area.
No one-size-fits-all solutions exist
This Working paper emphasizes that there are no one size-fits-all solutions but suggest some common issues that should be considered when planning 4P approaches:
- When designing 4P approaches, it is important to be aware of, and to address the differences in, resources and influence between actors. It is important to identify the different actors that must be involved but also the variety of actors between and within the categories of “public”, “private” and people” and their different roles, motivations and strategies in urban development.
- Involvement of actors usually takes place through both partnerships (usually with private actors such as developers) and participation (with the general public). However, partnerships and participation imply very different positions in terms of influencing the planning process and the public planning authority should be aware of that to properly involve both the private sector and the general public.
- 4P approaches may make conflicting visions and goals visible but instead of hiding and avoiding conflicts, it is important to recognise and address openly conflicts and the different understandings and views the involved stakeholders may have.
Despite the benefits, it is not very common for cities to work in a very co-ordinated way with approaches following the 4P principles. The Baltic Urban Lab project creates and tests new integrated planning and partnership models with a focus on brownfield regeneration. In the city pilots (2016-2018), the Norrköping, Tallinn, Turku and Riga are developing and testing their 4P approaches and more will be learned about the possibilities, challenges and benefits gained from successful 4P approaches.
