Spatial Renewal and Lost Voices

The deliberation that precedes or runs alongside the remaking of cities, buildings and landscapes seem almost by default to generate situations with unsatisfied stakehold-ers, neglected citizen groups or completely ignored voices. What does it mean to find, listen and respond to those concerned by alteration of built environments? Here, in this paper, citizen participation, its ideological and political intentions, as well as its formal integration in planning, is discussed in relation to cases with a significantly broad range as far as both geographical location and cultural tradition concern. The cases – from India, Australia, Jordan and Sweden – reflect highly different histories and political circumstances, but these cases, regardless of type of planning and construction culture, do still collectively reflect the problem of what “the right to the city” means. This essay points out threats to democratic rights, such as deliberate omittance of groups, unfair grouping of opinions, and informal official planning ac-tions. It is discussed here how these threats become ethical and factual problems in dialogue, and in a final reflection, what could be seen as needed for dialogues to work. The overall statement – in this short survey that builds on previous studies and reflections of the four cases – is that that “extended dialogic thinking” is a way forward. For that to appear, reciprocal, multimodal, consolidated and durable atten-tion should characterize the dialogic act and its different phases.