LAUSR

Participatory planning traditionally requires face-to-face meetings with the public in community fora, design charrettes, planning commission meetings, and so on. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and aided by online participatory technologies, planners have been translating their face-to-face practices for use in digital forums. These new tools are equipping planners with greater ability to control meeting interactions, including the ability to stifle dissent. In this Viewpoint, we argue that planners should devise the means to protect modes of digital dissent if they want to avoid propagating the injustices of physical participatory processes in the digital world. Based on ongoing research, we offer guidance to planners about how to begin discussing the meaningful roles dissent could play and how it might effectively and fairly be incorporated into virtual participatory planning processes. In practice, this means that planners must pay more explicit attention to the norms and rules of participation as they evolve for online settings and to avoid hasty judgments when confronted with dissenting voices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of the American Planning Association is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)