Participation at any price? The ambivalence of the renaissance of direct democracy, in German municipalities

One of the main assumptions on how democracy can be achieved puts faith on the positive effects of the direct engagement of the citizens themselves. Urban planning has adapted to this idea in many countries. With the acceptance of the principal of subsidiarity, political participation of the cit-izens in decision processes has become a key idea for the further development for the European Uni on. The support for participatory forms of politics and planning were underpinned by a large desire in the European societies. The example of Germany shows that forms of direct democracy had major im pacts on urban planning. The analysis of the overall trend of the last two decades and of some selected examples however rises important questions. Framed by a sociological look on the new social and political conditions of German cities, it shows that the basic argument that more participation leads to more democratic grounding of planning can be questioned. In result, the review of the Ger man cases shows that in a ‘post-democracy’ (Crouch 2004), urban planning is confronted with a different meaning of participation.