High mountains and the faraway emperor : overcoming barriers to citizen participation in China's urban planning practices

At the heart of citizen participation is the principle that citizens have a right to be part of decisions that affect their lives (Lasker & Guidry, 2009). Although the importance of citizen participation has been espoused in Western planning literature for decades, the principle has more recently made its way into Chinese statutory legislation and so far the implementation of participatory planning practices has been limited (Fung, 2015). This paper's focus is specifically on the institutional barriers to implementation and how to strengthen participatory planning practices at the city-level in China. Yet the research theme has a universal applicability, as academics and policy makers across the globe address the acknowledged, inherent difficulty of putting the theory of citizen participation into practice (Innes & Booher, 2010; Hillier & Metzger 2015).