Professionals are

against participation
because it destroys the
arcane privileges of
specialization, unveils
the professional secret,
strips bare incompetence, multiplies responsibilities and converts
them from the private
into the social.
Giancarlo De Carlo

There was a time in architecture and planning practice when the notion that those
who will eventually inhabit the produced
environment should not interfere with the
expertise of professionals. And yet it is
curious that a collective profession should
have forgotten that sustained generations
of civilizations were built without professional expertise; expertise was found within
civilians themselves. For the past few decades, there has been a sort of renaissance
of this idea of participatory city-makingit
is a rhetoric that has been rearing its head
in increasingly normative ways (Jones,
Petrescu, and Till 2005, xiii); but just as we
should consider some of the most economically and
socio-politically inequitable conditions in the past few
decades, progress towards democratic ideals, should
we denitively consider participation as a sincere political agenda. Here, we will examine the nature and role

compulsory to the extent

that residents must approve any work in their
neighbourhood based on
collaboration between a
few key community leaders and professionals.
The remaining public is
pacied by teams whose
goal is to convince them
of the already drafted
plans (Querrien 2005,
112); true public participation is thus sidestepped.

Architecture & Democracy? // Perhaps participatory architecture and planning practice is simply in
direct conict with capitalist nation states. But even
more worrisome is the idea that something inherent in
the profession itself is in conict with democracy. There
is an irony to a profession whose services are
exclusive to a select few, yet intended for the
masses. Those with the monetary capacity to act
will be those who will shape the rest of our cities
and environments. Thus, civilians can only hope
that such benefactors and experts harbor the
same values. The imposition of a value system
on an entire society is not new to human history
and nowhere was this condition most evident in
our discipline than in one of architectures most
inuential periods.

By Olivia Cheung, April 2011

As one of the Modern Movement and CIAMs

ercest critics, Giancarlo De Carlo believed that the
identication of architects and urbanists to the ruling
class was at its height during these times (De Carlo
2005, 6). He claimed that credibility disappeared when
modern architecture chose the same public as academic or business architecture; that is, when it took an elite
position on the side of the client rather than on the side
of the user (2005, 7). Credibility in architecture for him
meant architectures capacity to have a public, and that
the failure of the Modern Movement to choose the real
public as architectures public, represented the failure
of the entire Movement. The optimism of modernism
and postwar modernism was the onset of the belief that
architects and planners had the power to bring about
great social reform. In their view, it would require massive moves to solve some of historys greatest social crisesthe unrestrained chaos of industrialized cities. Not
surprisingly, it was their belief that they were in the best

of democracy in the course of our spatial disciplines,

including the question of whether true democratic
practice can exist. through Isaiah Berlins theory of the
Two Concepts of Liberty.

The Participation Illusion // The industrialized nations of the west as well as globalized institutions, seen
by much of the world as upholding the ideals of freedom
and equal opportunity, tend to be the perpetrators of the
participatory practice rhetoric. In recent years, participation had become a mandatory component to public
work in Europe and the America. It was, however, seen
arguably as a simulated form of participation: participation becomes an organized (and potentially manipulated) part of any regeneration project, in which users
are meant to be given a voice, but the process sties
the sounds coming out (Jones et al., 2005). In present day France, participatory practice has also become
1

1 Corbu

position to do so. They planned for the total annihilation

and replanning of whole towns and cities, and in their
view, a new social order would follow.

to act. Based on social theorist and philosopher, Isaiah

Berlins two concepts of liberty, this might be considered
exemplary of a paradox of positive liberty rather than
positive liberty in its true form. This theory developed
out of his desire to understand the complexities of the
Cold War politics that were occurring at the time. Up until
2 Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright

The principles of the Garden City and New Town Movement extended to the politics of the Cold War, in which
architects like Constantin Doxiadis, agent of Americas Cold War
policy, were sent to the Middle
East and Africa by America in
hopes of spreading the Wests
democratic values to developing nations through architecture
and planning practices (Provoost
2006). This, in a sense, turned
planning into a means of cultural
colonization. Doxiadis imported
plan for Sadr city in Baghdad
would soon disintegrate into one
of Baghdads largest slums and
become a battleground for a new
urban warfare (Provoost 2006).
For dreamers like Le Corbusier
and Frank Lloyd Wright, the
manifestations of their architecture and town plans were
intended to be the embodiment of democratic ideals. Although some might argue that their intentions were morally justied, the eagerness to which they remade cities
at massive scales seems all too familiar to the ways of an
autocrat. Nevermore does the irony of democratic ideals
yield itself in such well-intended colonialism.

that point, the concept of liberty had been represented

as a singular entity, based on Immanuel Kants idea.
Berlin further elaborated on two kinds of liberty: negative liberty and positive liberty. Negative liberty is the
freedom from or the absence of constraints, obstacles
and barrier (i.e. factors external from the actor); positive
liberty is the freedom to, or the ability to act to pursue
ones willed goals (i.e. internal capacities of the actor to
self-determine) (Cherniss and Hardy 2010).

Social Reform & the

Paradoxes of Liberty //

Berlin warned of the possibility of construing positive

liberty for the purposes of social indoctrination and
totalitarian control and labeled this the paradox of positive liberty. This stems from the basis that there is often
identication with a collectivea move from the interest
of the self to the interest of the group and that greater
and just goals can only be achieved with others interests in mind. Many totalitarian movements of the past,
including the Soviets Fascist regime of the Cold War
era, used this idea to indoctrinate their collective populationsthe message that to be truly liberated, you must
sacrice yourself to greater group principles. Liberation
could only be obtained when you transforms yourself
into a better, more rational person. How this could be
achieved would ultimately be determined by the regime
(Cherniss and Hardy 2010). The paradox, of course,

Let us evaluate the notion

of democracy, for it seems
imperative to be able to
identify and resist its illusory
forms. It was the belief of
some architects and planners aligned with the Modern Movement that their
new plans would liberate
the individual and collective
society through behavioural
reform; that the new urban
and suburban environments
usiers Radiant City master plan
would produce reformed, moral
human beings (Fitting 2002). Thus, these new environments would become determinants of the peoples will
2

can be summed by the statement: We must force the

people to be free. In exchange for a single authoritys
own will to act, an entire nations will to act is sacriced
and consequently is a form of social and political oppression.

that negative liberty can also take the form of an illusion

of freedom?

The Paradox of Negative Liberty // The danger

of a more silent form of autocracy now presents itself.
It is this condition that Cedric Prices idea of Non-Plan
(1969) exemplies. He presents scenarios with the
absent constraints of conventional planning policies like
the Town and Country Planning Act of 1968, in the formation and alteration of British towns and regions. What he
nds is that absolute liberty starts to impinge on the liberties of others: as people become richer they demand
more space; and because they become at the same
time more mobile, they will be more able to command
itWorst of all: they are judgments about how they think
other peoplenot of their acquaintance or classshould
live (442).

A similar, albeit less explicit form of this paradox is present in the Modernists approach to planning and human
reform. Their belief that the built environment had the
power to determine how people will act meant that as
the designers of the built environment, they were the
ultimate determinants of liberated human behavior. Yet
again, we encounter the determinism of liberation. With
the dangers this idea of positive liberty presented, it was
in Berlins view that there must be systems devised to
ensure the least amount of power is centrally exerted.
He therefore advocated for what he saw as the more
gentile and impervious, negative liberty.

In recent decades, the advent of neoliberal policies has

essentially proliferated this condition. The principles on
which the free market system were based are remarkably aligned with Berlins negative liberty. Free-market
economists believed that the market would self-stabilize
without constraints. Instead, absolute market freedom
resulted in the unbridled accumulation of private capital
to a very small minority, at the expense of those with
little wealth to begin with. This not only increased economic disparity between the haves and have-nots, but
increased the pervasiveness of poverty to a level almost
unmatched in history. With such dangers of false forms
of liberty presented from both positive and negative
liberty, can liberty in its true form be found, if at all?

Negative Liberty as Resistance? // Negative

liberty was the kind of freedom he believed the West
should be ghting for in the Cold Wara somewhat
oppositional framing of the liberty used by autocrats
and tyrants. A notion more focused on the individuality of people rather than the collective, it was based on
the belief that all humans should have the ability to act
freely, until it hinders upon others. It is thus the states
responsibility to provide the minimal constraints and
regulations necessary to ensure each individuals freedom. This, in turn, would encourage a society of selfseeking individuals which would naturally stabilize and
gain order. What he did not anticipate, however, were
the intricacies and intangible qualities to the
ways in which humans could impinge on one
anotherappropriate constraints, therefore,
would be difficult to sanction.

Societies promoting a negative kind of liberty are those generally granting individual
freedom in the acquisition of capital. In the
West, democracy and capitalism go hand
in hand. Herein lays the unforeseen dangers of negative liberty. It is once again the
darker side of human nature to which these
consequences can be attributedour un3 Giancarlo De Carlos steelworkers housing in Terni, Italy: the rst participatory planning project in Italy
yielding desire to consume and accumulate
at the expense of others. In such socio-political systems,
If fear of the illusion of positive liberty is, to an extent,
it is inevitable that those with the accumulation of capital
based on the manipulation of individuals through collecare those with the accumulation of powerthose now
tive interests, are there no means by which true posiequipped with the capacity to decide the fate of others,
tive liberty can be arrived at collectively or individually?
to strip away others capacities to act. Could it be, then,
The original concept of positive liberty still remains that
3

as people become richer they defreedom is within ones

version of it. Rather,
mand more space; and because
own capacity to act and
multiple forms of particithey become at the same time
to determine ones own
pation are necessary to
more mobile, they will be more
life without the manipularespond to the multiple
able to command it...Worst of all:
tive exertion of external
users, desires and
forces. Defenders of what
contexts that individuthey are judgments about how
can be considered the
als and groups consists
they think other peoplenot of
true form of positive libin reality (Jones,
their acquaintance or classshould of
erty including, Rousseau,
Petrescu and Till 2005);
liveCedric Price
Hegel, Marx and T.H.
what form these modes
Green, believe that this
of participation should
form of liberty can be achieved through political action.
take to produce the most desirable outcomes, however,
A collective group of individuals can exercise control
will be reserved for another discussion.
over their own affairs, in accordance with the general
will; a democratic society is a free society as it is selfWhile true positive liberty and its central theme of pardetermined and members of it are liberated to the extent
ticipation might be considered a resistance to paternal
that they participate in this democratic process (Cherniss
forms of the same idea, there is still one key assumption
and Hardy 2010). Participation of individuals and comthat must be made in order for true positive freedom
munities in the process of determining their livelihoods
to occur; that is, decisions to be made with capacities
is, thus, a true form of positive freedom. This notion
of our own, must not impinge on others. This is where
shares close ties to the Kantian tradition of autonomy.
it may be advantageous to combine the two concepts
Whereas positive freedom concerns the ability to act
of liberty in a way that achieves a more informed liband the particular acts themselves, personal or individual
ertytrue positive freedom under the awareness of the
autonomy concerns the psychological and human states
paradoxes of the two liberties. Perhaps a more useful
that motivates one to act (Christman 2011).
paradox might exist whereby a certain amount of constraint might indeed be necessary to keep true positive
liberty from falling into either versions of its evil counterArchitecture & Participation as Positive Liberty
partthe paradoxes of positive and negative liberty; this
Participation as central to the true form of positive
might, in the end, be the paradox of all paradoxes.
freedom has been advocated in architectural practice
most convincingly by Giancarlo De Carlo. He stated that
(2005) in reality, architecture has become too important
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4