Citizen Participation, the ‘Knowledge Problem’ and Urban Land Use Planning: An Austrian Perspective on Institutional Choice

At the forefront of the argument for government-directed land use planning is the notion that ‘citizen participation’ in urban land use decisions can avoid the problems associated with bureaucratic governance and tackle widespread instances of ‘market failure’. Using illustrations from the British land use planning system this paper argues that participatory planning models are insufficiently attuned to the problems of social coordination generated by the absence of market prices and of the importance of private property rights in facilitating ‘experiments in urban living’.