The Public Participation Handbook: Making Better Decisions Through Citizen Involvement

by James L. Creighton

Internationally renowned facilitator and public participation consultant James L. Creighton offers a practical guide to designing and facilitating public participation of the public in environmental and public policy decision making. Written for government officials, public and community leaders, and professional facilitators, The Public Participation Handbook is a toolkit for designing a participation process, selecting techniques to encourage participation, facilitating successful public meetings, working with the media, and evaluating the program.  The book is also filled with practical advice, checklists, worksheets, and illustrative examples.

Genres: Nonfiction

261 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2005

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Reviews

[Carlin Spink]

Although a useful introduction to public participation, it is excruciatingly pragmatic. Marketed as a "how to" guide on participation, the book's overall tone floats more closely to "how to do public participation in a cursory manner only if your employer absolutely demands the existence of a participatory method while simultaneously reminding the reader to restrain their method as much as possible in order to not jeopardize their employment". Creighton does stress the importance of the correct method — so as to not de-incentivize citizen involvement by perpetuating the dogma that participation is expensive and time consuming and has no real value — and offers you a multitude of methods to choose from; but if you're looking for a deep dive into the complexities, problems and various methods of participatory development, you've come to the wrong place.

[Josh]

not too bad of a read, however, parts of the book were repetitive. the author seemed to have a fair amount of practical experience guiding the suggestions laid out therein. as far as textbooks go - it was still a fairly boring read, but very informative. depending on the position i take post-graduation, this book will probably end up on my reference shelf.