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 co-ordination generated by the absence of market prices and of the importance of private property rights in facilitating -experiments in urban living-.