Background: Urban development and creating livable cities involves of a huge variety of stakeholders, such as private households, business, planning authorities, land developers, conservationists and has to find a transparent and legitimate balance between the different interests of these groups and people. Against this background, stakeholder participation seems a promising approach in order identify mutual benefits but also conflicts between different interests. Participation processes, related infrastructure and tools may also provide a platform for exchange and communication. However, a wide range of open questions has to be answered to exploit the full potential of participatory processes and to enhance decision-making in terms of legitimacy, acceptance and local ownership.
Goal: Understanding how stakeholder participation may facilitate urban development and the creating of livable urban spaces, what pro and cons different participatory approaches entail in a given context and how it might be best embedded in the course of planning and project development.
Rationale from the themes: Demand: Urban land use is in constant transition according to the needs of stakeholders. Expansion, density and use type all affect the social, economic and environmental quality of cities and have effects on human well-being, economic development but also microclimate and urban biodiversity. The high demand for land from various groups and for various uses leads to land use-conflicts, for example, for settlement and infrastructure as well as green infrastructure in urban areas that need to be settled.
Natural Capital: Green and blue-infrastructures provide a range of ecosystem services to different actors in urban regions. Inhabitants may benefit from enhanced access to green spaces for recreation and leisure, reduced air pollution (e.g. particular matters), noise reduction and cooling effects. City authorities might recognize the benefit of green infrastructures to make their city more resilient to extreme events (heat stress, flooding, etc.). Business may benefit from (touristic) attractiveness of their location.
Land Management: A main task for sustainable urban management is to find ways of balancing the needs and pressures of urban dynamics with the opportunities and constraints of the environment and human well-being. The fundamental challenge to create livable cities is to find acceptable solutions that integrate the different interests of the various stakeholders involved, and to find appropriate instruments for solving land-use conflicts resulting from this interplay of interests.
Net Impact: Stakeholder participation may help to identify winners and losers of urban development and support urban planning in finding acceptable and legitimate planning solutions that reduce negative impacts of urban development on the environment and enhance the attractiveness and livability of cities. However, participation may bring along transaction costs and may reduce predictability of planning processes. So there is a need to identify cost-effective solutions and tools to realize the full potential of participation for supporting urban planning.
 
So what? Understanding the potential of stakeholder participation will help to ensure the livability of urban development and enhance transparency and legitimacy of decision-making.
Links to other fields: While urban green infrastructure constitutes just an example for the need to recognize and moderate conflicting land use-interests, research regarding the benefits of participation, the design of participatory measures and the pros and cons this might entail would be of great benefit for other conflict situations, too, e.g. in deciding upon land use intensities, designating protected areas, spatially optimizing land use at landscape level and so forth.