Consensus Building Versus Irreconcilable Conflicts

This book aims to identify ways of overcoming the limitations of the communicative tradition in understanding participatory spatial planning. Three conceptual models that offer different perspectives on public and civic participation in complex urban planning processes are presented and reviewed: the consensual model, which conceives of planning as a collective decision-making practice geared toward consensus building and conflict resolution; the conflictual model, which views planning as a social mobilization practice addressed at empowerment of marginalized groups; and the trading zone model, which reframes collaborative planning as a coordination activity with respect to practical proposals in the presence of unstable and conflicting rationalities and values. The controversial story of the Integrated Intervention Program “PII Isola Lunetta” in Milan is examined through the interpretative lenses of these models, with detailed interpretation of how each model performs in the field. The book concludes by offering critical reflections on the reframing of participatory spatial planning, highlighting the value of trading zones/trading languages and boundary objects as tools for understanding and addressing collaborative practices in complex and conflictual urban planning processes.

Building United Judgment describes the techniques and skills which groups can apply to make the principles of consensus work effectively. Whether you are new to consensus or a "practiced hand," whether your group uses consensus in the "classic" form or wants to apply consensus principles to your own decision making structure, this book provides a thorough review of practical methods that can make your efforts work. A classic introduction to secular consensus, Building United Judgment was recently brought back into print by the Fellowship for Intentional Community. It is an excellent explanation of what it means to make the switch from voting to consensus, and how to unlock the potential of groups working with the whole person. Highly recommended, Building United Judgment is a perfect companion publication to A Manual for Group Facilitators. Chapters in Building United Judgment include: A Step-by-Step Process Attitude and Consensus Your Participation in Consensus When Agreement Can't be reached Structuring Meetings The Role of the Group Facilitator Communication Skills Working with Emotions Conflict and Problem Solving Techniques for Group Building Adaptations for Special Situations Handling Common Problems "This is THE consensus process manual, used by many intentional communities around the country. It offers practical advice on working with consensus groups, how to run meetings, dealing with difficult issues and people. The book itself was written by a group of people that used a consensus process to determine the content and coverage. In places the styles of the differing authors vary a little. There are also fascinating notes at the margins and bottoms of pages which illustrate the development of the content of the book. If you have only one consensus book in your library, this is the one to have. If you are a group attempting to use consensus, you will benefit hugely from the practical advice this book has to offer." - Rob Sandelin, experienced consensus teacher from Sharingwood Cohousing Community

Conflict is at the heart of life. It impacts relationships of the heart, the home, the community, and at work. Most flee from it, some embrace it, but few learn how to master conflict and productively transform it into a consensus. Author Robert Chadwick is one of those few. For over forty years, he has been helping individuals and communities experience and learn how to best address their personal, interpersonal, and intergroup conflicts. In Finding New Ground, he shares his insights and a process from his storied career as a conflict resolution manager. He shows readers how to apply these insights and the process in their own life situations, finding new ground in their relationships, creating a path to a way of being that changes everyone around them. The author's purpose is to help you experience, learn, and understand a process for addressing and resolving conflicts and building consensus with 100 percent agreement. The book informs readers on how people define conflict, their feelings about it, what causes it, the arenas in which it occurs, and why conflict must always be confronted. It demonstrates why people avoid resolving their conflicts. It demonstrates what a true consensus is and why it is always possible. A central section of the book explores an intergroup conflict that erupts over the use of a fictional river basin in the American West. This fictional account is based on Chadwick's real-life experience, providing a context for learning about the process in a real way. You are part of the story as a co-facilitator with the author. Throughout this story the actual words and statements of previous workshop participants are used to create a sense of reality. Through this story, the reader will vicariously experience and understand the complexity of this simple consensus building process and learn how to apply the skills and tools for finding new ground. These include the use of the circle, listening with respect, empowering yourself and others, creating a sense of equity, and fostering a sense of community. This real life situation shows how a conflict-riddled group moved from divisiveness and animosity to consensus while they crafted a short term purpose, a long term vision, articulated shared beliefs, and developed a common strategic plan. His model of consensus building has worked across different cultures. It has been deployed in countries like India, Thailand, Canada, Hong Kong, Russia, and Belgium. His workshop participants cut a wide swath through contemporary society, ranging from loggers and librarians to police officers, educators, and professional managers. His methods have been used by people from a range of ages, from kindergarten students to senior citizens in their ninth decade of life. Chadwick's book presents a proven transformative model for addressing contemporary conflicts and building consensus. Individuals, families, community, churches, and businesses all stand to learn a lot from his unique approach to finding new ground. His method is grounded in reality, and through building consensus allows participants to move beyond the hostility of conflict to fostering the creation of civility and community.

Anna Snyder provides a detailed account of the challenges women representatives in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) faced in building bridges across diverse ethnic, racial, national, regional, and ideological backgrounds at the 4th United Nations (UN) Conference on Women. This book traces the process by which women's peace groups set an agenda for global policies in the area of women and armed conflict. Setting the Agenda for Global Peace shows how NGOs use conflict to develop transnational social movements and to build consensus around issues of global concern. Using this conference as a case study, Snyder finds three purposes for social movement conflict: contention arising from policy development; deep-rooted historical conflict; and conflicts over NGO network priorities. Drawing together feminist, conflict resolution, and social movement theories, this comprehensive text analyzes the large scale decision making processes for NGOs and points towards future directions for conflict resolution and consensus building.

Activist planning shows how communities, neighbourhoods and social movements use their own alternative spatial planning to oppose interventions from the government. This book is a systematic overview of scholarly reported activist planning cases. It includes descriptions of the various kinds of activist planning and contains a comprehensive bibliography of academic publications related to the 164 cases. The book informs the planning community what activist planning is in practice, and offers a classification scheme where all reported cases fit in. This text is needed because no comprehensive collection of activist planning cases exists, nor does a classification comprising all types of activist planning. There is, to date, no database of cases and associated literature providing researchers and students with an authoritative source. The search for cases in the English language has been global, and the cases and 122 supplementary examples are sorted by country and world region ‒ Australasia, Europe, the Global South and North America.

This handbook on group decision-making for those wanting to operate in a consensus fashion stresses the advantages of informal, common sense approaches to working together. It describes how any group can put these approaches into practice, and relates numerous examples of situations in which such approaches have been applied.

The book discusses the concept of the smart city, and is based on a multi-service and multi-sectoral approach to urban planning, including various urban functions and the human capital of cities. The work is divided into three parts. The first is an introductory section which covers definitions, policies and tools used at European level for the development and classification of a smart city. The second presents a selection of examples of Western and Eastern communities, which experienced technologies and strategies that have made them smart. The third describes in detail the main three possible approaches (economical, technological and social) to the smart city concept which are the focus ambits of the holistic concept of smart city. The work provides a good overview of the concept of smart city, and also offers a critical analysis of the various approaches to smart cities, in order to provide tools to develop solutions that address the smart development of cities with an approach as multi-sectoral as possible. Its accessible language and several examples make the book easy to read and appealing to public administrators, students, planners and researchers.

The days of rationalist scientific management and deference to official data are behind us. The credibility of experts and the information they provide are regularly challenged; officials are routinely provided with conflicting sets of facts as they plan and make decisions; and decision makers and stakeholders alike are largely skeptical that technical information will adequately account for the various interests and concerns and lead to the right outcomes. They struggle to reconcile technical information with other forms of knowledge, and differing interests, priorities and perspectives. Issues like climate change are complicating matters even further, as scientists and technicians must increasingly acknowledge the uncertainty and potential fallibility of their findings, and highlight the dynamic nature of the systems they are explaining. This book examines how groups looking to plan and make decisions in any number of areas can wade through the imperfect and often contradictory information they have to make fair, efficient, wise and well-informed choices. It introduces an emerging and very promising approach called joint fact-finding (JFF). Rather than each stakeholder group marshaling the set of facts that best advance their respective interests and perspectives while discrediting the contradictory facts others provide, groups are challenged to collaboratively generate shared sets of facts that all parties accept. This book introduces readers to the theory of JFF, the value it can provide, and how they can adopt this approach in practice. It brings together writings from leading practitioners and scholars from around the world that are at the forefront of the JFF approach to science intensive policymaking, urban planning, and environmental dispute resolution. The first set of chapters outlines the concept of JFF, and situates it within other bodies of theory and practice. The second set of case-based chapters elucidates how JFF is being applied in practice. This book delivers a new perspective to scholars in the field of public policy, urban planning, environmental studies, and science and technology studies, as well as public officials, technical experts, policy consultants, and professional facilitators.