Unlocking the Door of the City Hall: Vienna’s Participatory Shift in Urban Development Policy

This chapter explores the evolution of Vienna’s participatory governance in the context of urban development. It sheds light on the changing role of citizens in the City’s urban planning, shaped by the decentralisation process that began in the early 1970s. Since then, urban development policies targeting social inclusion became a realm for widening citizen engagement at the neighbourhood level. However, we argue that growing opportunities for participation went hand in hand with some negative side-effects – namely the self-selection of citizens in small-scale neighbourhood planning, resulting in the uneven distribution of participatory channels within the city.