Organizational Structure of Participatory Planning in Urban Regeneration: Cases from Shanghai, China

In recent years, participatory planning, which can balance diverse stakeholders’ interests, is becoming popular in urban regeneration project. Among all the participatory approaches, design competition has gained great attention due to its efficiency in propagating the consciousness of participation, collecting residents’ needs and strengthening the experts’ involvement. However, the organizational structure of this rising approach in urban regeneration remains unclear. Based on this background, this paper examines an experimental city-level design competition in Shanghai, China. Using data from government documents, field study and participative observation, the phasing and the implementation process of this competition are studied, through which the organizational structure is implied. Specially, by discussing the implementation process of two case models, the key actors were revealed, setting subdistrict office as the leading role. Also, the significance of flexible cooperation mode and of wider communication platform are both emphasized.