Collaborative planning for city development. A perspective from a city planner

Collaborative governance has been developed since early 2000. This model could be characterized by collecting multiple stakeholders in a common forum for consensus decision-making, often led by public agencies (Anshell and Gash, 2008). The principle characteristic is that this leads to the outcomes satisfying all parties involved (Gray, 2000). Booher’s analysis shows that there are common characteristics such as policy consensus, community visioning, consensus rule-making, and collaborative network structures in collaborative governance (Innes and Booher, 2004). One of the problems that may hinder the theories of collaboration is that researchers employ different defi nitions of “collaboration” (Imperial, 2005). Jody Freeman argues that collaborative governance “requires problem-solving, broad participation, provisional solutions, the sharing of regulatory responsibility across the public-private divide and a fl exible engaged agency.” (Freeman, 1997), while Innes and Booher argue that collaborative governance models must be engaged in “authentic dialogue” with each stakeholder legitimately representing the interests for which they claim to speak, coming to the table with interests, but also with open minds about their positions and a willingness to “seek mutual gain solutions” (Innes and Booher, 2004).