ABSTRACT
A key component of the recent approach to regional strategic planning in Northern Ireland has been the involvement of an independent “Research Consortium” in its extensive public participation exercise. This chapter considers some aspects of public participation in current theory and past practice, and describes key features of the case study within that context. All strategic spatial planning initiatives must take account of the Transnational Studies and the European Spatial Development Perspective to attempt to achieve some coherence in policy-making. In relation to strategic planning in Britain, the Regional Strategic Framework should have more relevance for emerging regional structures than for traditional structure planning which focused mainly on land use planning for city regions. The concept of “public participation” has an established status within the British system of town and country planning, although there has been continuous debate about its meaning in practice.
