UP 378 Community Development Workshop in Alta Sita

Empowerment Planning Discussion

I. Advocacy Planning – planning that promotes the needs of the poor and the marginalized first and foremost.

In 1965, Paul Davidoff challenged the planning profession to become more involved in the civil rights struggle.  He claimed that planners should play a very important role in elevating the lives of the oppressed and representing the underrepresented.  Davidoff argued that advocacy planners could create plans that addressed the special needs of certain segments of the population and put their concerns on the policy-making agenda.  This approach is often called “plural planning”, because the idea is that multiple plans (plans made by the private, public, and non-profit sectors) would improve the overall quality of local planning .

In the years following Davidoff’s challenge, hundreds of plans were created under the “advocacy” idea.  Unfortunately, these plans had minor success because they were rejected by the private sector who viewed these plans as attacks on the status quo .  Also, advocacy planning, while acting on behalf of the poor and marginalized does not typically INVOLVE these actors in the planning process.  In response to the problems of advocacy planning, EMPOWERMENT PLANNING has emerged as a way to overcome the problems associated with advocacy planning by incorporating PARTICIPATORY ACTION RESEARCH and DIRECT ACTION ORGANIZING.  These two methods effectively address the problems of advocacy planning by involving local residents in every step of the planning process and by organizing support from both the private and public sector for the plan.

II. Empowerment Planning -  a definition

--an alternative approach to community development practice that seeks to improve the quality of urban and rural life by enhancing community mobilization, social learning, problem solving, program development and non-profit management capacities of CBO’s serving low-income communities in order to promote more equitable patterns of urban and regional development.

Principles of Empowerment Planning
 

• Broad-based citizen groups are needed to influence public and private decision making ---“power to the people”
• Emphasis on the development of local citizen organization with the capacity to train residents in Participatory Action Research and Community Organizing
• Focus on training residents to be the leaders, rejection of the “expert model”
• Actively involve citizens in every step of the process – on equal footing with “professional planners”
• Planning process is not a linear path, straight from problem identification to implementation.  Rather, it is a constant process of action and reflection and reshaping the process to address new information.
• Every step of the process is an opportunity to involve more and more residents

III. Participatory Action Research – principles

• Commitment to the most marginalized groups
• Local residents determine the research agenda – what the plan will study
• Local residents are involved as co-investigators at each step in the planning process
• Commitment to using knowledge to promote change, knowledge = power
• Willingness to take action when information may be imperfect or incomplete
• Combination of quantitative and qualitative methods
• Emphasis on building local capacity to solve complex issues
• Appreciate iterative nature of research
• Commitment to broad dissemination of information through scholarly and popular outlets

IV. Direct Action Organizing -  principles

The roots of direct action organizing can be found in the Settlement House movement, the Civil Rights era, the Women’s movement and student movements across the country.  Jane Addams, John L. Lewis, Ella Baker and Saul Alinsky are important contributors to direct action organizing.  Many national networks regularly use DAO.  These groups include the Industrial Areas Foundation, ACORN, the Gamaliel Foundation and others
 

• Good ideas are rarely enough to achieve social reform – must act and organize on issues
• Broad base of organized political power is critical to implementation of community-initiated plans
• Community organizations seek to be representative of the neighborhoods they serve in terms of membership and leadership
• People will organize around issues that are of critical importance to them
• Use the issue to mobilize existing leaders and interested individuals
• Focus pressure on those holding the power
• Move to increasingly confrontational tactics until you get the desired response (ESLCAN)
• Participation in issue campaign provides a rich form of political education
• Collaborate with other groups, form partnerships with all sectors, increase support

V. Education for Critical Consciousness - principles

The major component of Empowerment Planning is EDUCATION, or what is often referred to as “Education for Critical Consciousness”.  This concept has its roots in Latin American Literacy, land Reform and Social Justice Campaigns. The important contributors in the fields include Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, Myles Horton and Ira Schor..  This is the basis for liberation schools for children and adults throughout the world.
 

• Personalize problems (example: poor street lighting is our problem to act on, not just the city’s problem)
• Examine the structural nature of problems – why did things get as bad as they did in ESL?
• Encourage individuals to compare the actual operation of their local political system with the “civic book” understanding of these systems
• Individuals are exposed to situation in which people just like them have mobilized to end oppressive social and economic problems
• People are challenged to work collectively to end the structures that oppress them

VI. Drawbacks of Empowerment Planning

• Process is time consuming
• It threatens traditionally trained professionals who use the “rational planning model”
• May require longer and different training for future professionals (how is planning taught?)
• Support must be provided to resident leaders given the reciprocal nature of the process

VII. Comparison of TRADITIONAL PLANNING and EMPOWERMENT

The traditional planning model focuses on large-scale physical improvements that are devised by planning professionals.  This model has limited citizen participation and employs top-down decision making tactics. The idea is that plans and policy are made by planners working for municipal government or private consulting firms who have the technical and analytical skills to devise doable projects for an area.

Traditional Model
 

1. Recognize the issue 2. Set goals and work program 3. Collect and analyze data 4. Refine goals and work program 5. Develop alternative plans 6. Analyze impacts of alternative plans 7. Adopt plan 8. Implement 9. Monitor and evaluate effects of the plan 10. Gather feedback from the community

Exercise #1: From what we have studies throughout our planning education related to TRADITIONAL PLANNING, please provide some POSITIVE and NEGATIVE characteristics of the traditional model.

In contrast, EMPOWERMENT PLANNING emphasizes the involvement of residents in plan creating, implementation and policy reform.  The belief is that through their lifetime experiences, residents know what is wrong in their neighborhoods and many cases know how to make things better, but lack the organizational and financial resources necessary to bring about change.

Empowerment Model

Exercise #2: From what we have studied today and throughout our planning education related to EMPOWERMENT PLANNING, please provide some POSITIVE and NEGATIVE characteristics of the empowerment model.
 
 
 
 

[Tool Kit]
 
 
 
 
 

Document author(s) : Cathy Klump
Last modified: 1-Feb-99, C. Klump