Study On The Public Participation In Urban Renewal

As an important segment of urban construction and development, urban renewal is a livelihood project with the broad masses of people's lives. By its very nature, urban renewal is a process which readjusts and redistributes social and public resource, and it involves many stakeholders and concerns with their vital interests. The process of urban renewal often leads to change of original benefit structure based on social and public resources, thus, it is unavoidable that conflict of interest among stakeholders will be initiated in the process of urban renewal, and a series of social problems caused by it could seriously impede the sustainable development of the city. Therefore, the urban renewal is responsible for not only improving urban appearance and solving the problem of people's livelihood but also coordinating conflicts of transformation process and promoting the harmonious development of urban society.Urban renewal contains the content such as land expropriation, compensation of households, resident resettlement, and maintenance management, which relate to the vital interests of general public, so the key to success of urban renewal is to reflect public interests and heartfelt wishes, which is determined by the public features of the urban renewal. Only fully respect the public opinion, listen to public voice and maintain fundamental interests of the public's especially vulnerable groups', public understanding and support can be obtained. Consequently, the significance and the role of public participation to urban renewal are unallowable to be neglected. Introducing public participation into urban renewal has become the important content for ensuring smooth implementation of reconstruction project.Through the literature research, this paper elaborates some theories on public participation at home and abroad such as Public Choice Theory, the Deliberative Democracy Theory, a Choice Theory of Planning, a Ladder of Citizen Participation, and Communicative Planning Theory, and clarifies some key concepts like urban renewal and public participation. Using comparative analysis, this article analyses the practice of public participation of city planning in developed countries, and concludes some useful experience and enlightenment. Besides, this paper analyses stakeholder in urban renewal, and deeply studies the relationship among local government, developers and the public and their respective interest demand, and based on it, further analyses conflicts of interest among stakeholders. Directing at the necessity, status quo and deficiency of public participation in urban renewal and making each stage of urban renewal as the main line, finally this article preliminary designs the public participation mechanism involving the whole process of urban renewal which consists of participation subject, participation matter, participation way and participation effectiveness such four basic elements, and provides some suggestions on improving the public participation mechanism in urban renewal.