Barriers to Stakeholder Involvement in Sustainable Rural Tourism Development—Experiences from Southeast Europe

Participative planning approaches are vital to sustainable development in rural areas. However, stakeholder involvement also faces many barriers. In this Danube region case study, barriers to stakeholder involvement across eight rural regions are investigated. With the standardized conditions provided through an ERDF and IPA funded EU project, special attention could be paid to socio-cultural barriers, specifically concerning perception of sustainability and conflicts of interest. The effects of these barriers to the planning process are seen in the comparison of awareness concerning overall goals, indicators and the regional self-assessments. The implications for planning and management in rural tourism areas find that the perception of sustainability varies greatly, perceived deficiencies increase awareness and that crucial indicators need to be understood by stakeholders beginning a participative planning approach.

Why is it beneficial for landscape architects in Poland to learn about public participation while designing a public park? Reflections on the theory, education and practice of participative planning

Securing green infrastructure is crucial to maintaining the quality of life in cities therefore it is necessary to create new public green spaces responding to the needs of city dwellers. This paper provides a qualitative evaluation of the results of teaching the process of public participation to landscape architecture students from Politechnika Krakowska including such activities both preceding and during their work on the design of public parks. In this paper the author describes the rationale behind introducing participative planning into academic education and its theoretical background, as well as comparing the local perspective with examples of successful participative projects in the broader European context and the context of international trends in landscape architecture and urban planning in general. Both the teaching methodology and participation tools used are presented, referring to the methods already in use in practice and highlighting the fact that the teaching goes far beyond the legal minimum foreseen in Polish legislation. Finally, based on a summary of their experiences and case studies, particular fields of impact observed in the practical implementation of their projects are identified. Taking all this into consideration, it may be stated that from the moment when landscape architecture graduates started working for the public authorities in Kraków and making use of their knowledge and skills in public participation, the quality of public involvement has risen and the number of parks realised via this process is growing.

Planning and opportunism

The paper analyzes the occurrence of opportunistic behaviour opportunities in the planning processes. The following types of planning are distinguished: self-planning, collective planning, planning on behalf (or by contract), and directive (or prescriptive) planning. It is shown that any type of it excluding self-planning generates incentives to opportunistic behavior. Within this frame-work, two popular approaches in the planning theory are analyzed: participative planning and communicative one; it is shown that they are open to opportunism too. Basing on this analysis, the spheres of economy where government planning can be more efficient than market coordination mechanism are outlined.