Planning cell

	Citizen participation (→ overviews )
	Citizens 'forum / citizens' reports / planning cell
Goal / function	Advising decision-makers, influencing public discussions
typical topics	specific local or regional problems and planning tasks
context	Questions at local and regional level
typical clients	Local politics, local government, associations or similar actors
Duration	at least 4 consecutive days
Participants (number and selection)	100 people (4 groups of 25 people, usually); random selection
important actors, developers, rights holders	Peter Dienel , Citizen Participation Research Center at the University of Wuppertal
geographical distribution	v. a. Germany , also Europe
	Source: Nanz / Fritsche, 2012, pp. 86–87 (citizens' report / planning cell)

The planning cell ( Bürgerforum or Bürgergutachten , English: Citizens' jury ) is a consultation and participation process developed by Peter C. Dienel (further) , which enables the individual citizen to participate democratically in various planning and decision-making processes, for example within citizen participation .

development

Peter C. Dienel

The planning cell was originally developed by sociology professor Peter C. Dienel ( Bergische Universität Wuppertal ) in the 1970s as an advisory process to improve planning decisions . Later, however, it turned out to be a viable way of releasing the role of citizens for everyone. The task-oriented, but temporary work makes the co-steering participation in the state tangible for the population.

Today, however, the focus is still on the use of the planning cell to improve, accelerate and also make a current planning project cheaper. In each case, at least four of these cells are used to prepare a citizen's opinion on a problem that is sometimes considered to be difficult to solve. The proposed solutions of the citizen's report are mostly accepted as impartially neutral by the ineligible residents of the catchment area of a planning cell project ("mantle population"). They are then also taken over by politics and administration for their planning.

Citizens 'Juries (USA) and planning cells (Germany), Citizens' Forum

Ned Crosby developed a similar procedure to Peter Dienel's planning cell in the USA - it is based on the jury. Developed in 1974 as the Citizens 'Committee at the Jefferson Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA), the methodology was named Citizens' Jury in the late 1980s "to protect the process from commercialization".

The American “inventor” of the Citizens' Jury, Ned Crosby, and the German “inventor” of the planning cell , Peter Dienel, asserted that until 1985 they had no knowledge of the other's work.

On the other hand, this commonality is gladly pointed out at the citizens' forum (citizen participation) .

Procedure

Based on the insight that decision-making requires informedness, that information requires time and that time is money, relatively precisely defined procedural features can be specified for the planning cell procedure (in contrast to some other forms of civic participation):

A planning cell is a group of around 25 randomly selected people (aged 16 and over) who are released from their daily work responsibilities for around a week in order to work in groups on proposed solutions for a given planning problem. The participants commit to neutrality.

After an input for the entire group of a planning cell, small groups of four to six participants discuss a specific question and agree on important points / statements / positions - without any specifications or control by the moderator. After a consultation time of around an hour, the results are presented to the small groups. At the end of a work phase, the participants rate all the positions presented according to their approval / importance.

With a changing composition, the group works several times over the course of a day with four other lay planners in such a quasi-intimate situation. Continuous opinion leadership is excluded by the change. The experts and stakeholders are not present when the citizens are assessed.

The results of their deliberations are summarized in a so-called citizens' report and made available to the political decision-making bodies as an advisory document.

The representativeness increase, always several juries usually work in parallel on the same subject; If there are two planning cells that work one hour apart, the speakers can be available to both groups one after the other.

Results

In the last few years the procedure has been successfully applied both at the municipal and at the supraregional level for very different thematic issues. B. to improve the local public transport in Hanover , to clarify unresolved and controversial planning cases for many years as well as in the technology assessment , and has given the political decision-making bodies and clients valuable recommendations and advice.

The random selection means that a wide range of participants is achieved. Women and men are represented according to their proportion of the population, as are the different age groups. Participation is made easier for members of hard-to-get-off occupational groups through professional leave, and a substitute is sought for people with care responsibilities. In cases where participation z. B. was not possible for the selected person because of a disability, they were supported by a helper. If foreign participants had language problems, German-speaking family members were already better at helping than translators.

In the previous use cases, people were also reached who had never taken part in a political event or seminar before. It also brought people from different social (opinion) groups into conversation who would otherwise hardly meet and led to diverse processes of social learning .

The procedure can in principle be used at all decision-making levels. Due to the relatively high organizational and financial costs associated with its implementation, the use of planning cells will nevertheless remain limited to larger projects or decision-making issues in the future.

In 2007, the state youth council developed a form of youth planning cells as a “youth synod” in order to break through the chains of delegations of decision-makers with the random selection.

Further development

Timo Rieg transfers the working principle of the planning cells / citizen experts to parliamentary work and advocates a replacement of elected party parliaments by citizen parliaments that work in many parallel planning cells.

Selection of completed planning cells

Title of the citizen's report / client:

"A new distribution regulation for the waste management statute of the city of Aachen" Stadtbetrieb Aachen (PDF file; 6.32 MB)
“Together of the generations in an aging society” / State government of Rhineland-Palatinate
"Perspectives for Regensburg" / City of Regensburg
“Future energy policy” (with 24 PZs nationwide, the most extensive project to date; several accompanying publications) / KFA –Jülich / BMFT, Bonn
"BG - Bavarian Consumer Protection Program 2010" (with 18 PZ'n in 5 different locations) / Bavarian State Ministry for Health, Nutrition and Consumer Protection
“Cornerstones for a future Europe” (two planning cells each in Berlin and Budapest) / King Baudouin Foundation, Brussels

literature

Peter C. Dienel : The planning cell . The citizen as an opportunity. With status report 2002. 5th edition. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-531-33028-4 .

Horst Bongardt: The planning cell in theory and application. Academy for Technology Assessment in Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-932013-70-0 .

Hans-Liudger Dienel , Antoine Vergne, Kerstin Franzl, Raban D. Fuhrmann, Hans J. Lietzmann (eds.): The quality of citizen participation procedures. Evaluation and securing of standards using the example of planning cells and citizen reports. Oekom Verlag , Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-86581-247-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Patrizia Nanz , Miriam Fritsche: Handbook Citizen Participation: Procedures and Actors, Opportunities and Limits , bpb (vol. 1200), 2012 (PDF 1.37 MB) → to order the printed edition at bpb.de.
↑ ^a ^b About me | Ned Crosby - http://nedcrosby.org/about/ - "I am the American creator of the Citizens Jury process, which I invented in April of 1971, three months after Peter Dienel, a professor of sociology in Wuppertal, Germany, invented virtually the same process. We didn't learn of each other until 1985 ... "
↑ Participation of young people in the regional synod of the EKvW. Discussion proposal dated May 23, 2007 (PDF; 168 kB).
↑ Timo Rieg: Exile to Heligoland. Rich and happy without politicians. A master plan for all round tables and bowling clubs out in the country. Biblioviel, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-928781-11-1 .
↑ Klaus Rösler: Dienel estate now in the Oncken archive. In: The community. Believe. Together. Gestalten , from December 17, 2008, ZDB -ID 1157992-4 .

[nanz-fritsche-120309-1] Patrizia Nanz , Miriam Fritsche: Handbook Citizen Participation: Procedures and Actors, Opportunities and Limits , bpb (vol. 1200), 2012 (PDF 1.37 MB) → to order the printed edition at bpb.de.

[crosbyaboutme-2] About me | Ned Crosby - http://nedcrosby.org/about/ - "I am the American creator of the Citizens Jury process, which I invented in April of 1971, three months after Peter Dienel, a professor of sociology in Wuppertal, Germany, invented virtually the same process. We didn't learn of each other until 1985 ... "

[3] Participation of young people in the regional synod of the EKvW. Discussion proposal dated May 23, 2007 (PDF; 168 kB).

[4] Timo Rieg: Exile to Heligoland. Rich and happy without politicians. A master plan for all round tables and bowling clubs out in the country. Biblioviel, Bochum 2004, ISBN 3-928781-11-1 .

[5] Klaus Rösler: Dienel estate now in the Oncken archive. In: The community. Believe. Together. Gestalten , from December 17, 2008, ZDB -ID 1157992-4 .