Informing and including citizens into planning projects has become en vogue in current debates on urban design. This trend of generating public debate on urban design topics has been linked to a communicative turn inplanning theory (Healey, 1992) and the idea of democracy (Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). As a recent example,several planning offices in Western cities have translated these ideas into planning practice and established urbaninformation centres and engaged in efforts to include citizens in specific planning projects and in decisionmakingprocesses. Such efforts range from urban information centres, like the Centro de informação urbana de Lisboa (CIUL) and the ‘Planungswerkstatt’ in Vienna to participatory efforts in area regeneration, like Buiklosterham’ in Amsterdam and the False Creek Flats in Vancouver as well as specific municipality initiatives, like “A square for every neighbourhood” in Lisbon and the exhibition ‘getting growth right’ in Zurich.
Using Irwin’s (2001) concept of the ‘scientific citizen’ and empirical data from research on urban planning practices in Amsterdam, Lisbon, Vancouver, Vienna and Zurich, this presentation will discuss the framings of ‘the citizen’ and the ideas of ‘democracy’ in such information and participation efforts. It will be shown that the analysed projects have shown considerable differences in the ways planning knowledge, planning practice and public knowledge has been related to each other. In particular, the framings of urban planning as a technical or political exercise that is legitimized in both participatory and expert driven planning processes have been differently addressed.