Viewpoint on an article “Improving the Practice of Public Participation in Environmental Planning and Decision­ making in South Africa” by Merle Sowman

Abstract

In the April 1994 edition of the Jour­nal you published an interesting and well researched article by Merle Sowman entitled “Improving the Practice of Public Participation in Environmental Planning and Decision­making in South Africa”. While commending the whole tenure of the article and the clarity of analy­sis, I think that some comments on some practical problems of implemen­tation may be pertinent. As a practitioner who has recently been involved with planning schemes in which many of the issues high­lighted in the article were exposed, I can illustrate where some of the strate­gies suggested were effective and where others could not be satisfac­torily exploited.