One Page Summary

Property issues and land revenue usually conflict to the right to city and civic society awareness or to environmental preservation and other planning restrictions. Participation and consensus needs time. A common practice of collaborative or participatory planning is to engage all the stakeholders from the beginning of the process.
EFROF solution proposes actually the design of a reformative process. During the given six months the team will guide and monitor consultations and at the end it will submit a road map for the completion of the participatory planning process. The solution aims first to design a tailored process as a tool for increasing participatory and capacity building. This will then produce a strategic public policy for new residential areas, supported by innovative planning instruments. The idea of EFROF, as stated in its name (Eat the FROg First), is to start from the difficult part of the process, which is to generate an active, inclusive, creative, positive and educated landowners group. It is important for them to feel that they own the initiative and that no one else is involved unless it is invited to do so.
Câmpușor at Sibiu is a complex case since land fragmentation and multi – ownership do not create a uniform owners’ group but a shuffle of scattered interests and attitudes that could destroy any fragile consensus at any stage of the process. The key of the success lies on the reliability of the owners' group, who are non-surprisingly the part that is harder to deal with. Any attempt of predicting them with ready ideas or inviting them in a strict and inflexible procedure will make most of them suspicious and negative. The solution proposes three phases (i) "maturing" the landowners, (ii) building understanding among all stakeholders, (iii) final consultation.
At first, the landowners have to get involved. Their individual interest and the opportunity to increase significantly their property assets would be a strong motivation, if it is clearly communicated to them. Then they must realise that their commitment to a process, where they themselves will have the responsibility to run efficiently, is the only way for them to benefit. The solution team and the challenge owner are just mediators, facilitators and advisors. In this context, they have to decide and build their own governing structure in order to expedite decision-making. Since this commitment is established, they have to be educated and increase their awareness and their receptiveness to possible concerns set by the other stakeholders. They have to understand that their interests are secured, but the only way to come to a productive end is to bring them all by their side. This will be their main task and their big challenge. The last part is to make them realize that they are part of a unique and progressive project that will be an example for other cases in the future. At the same time, they have to create their own vision and become very proud to share it and expand it with the other stakeholders. All this process will run through open workshops and events and take at least three months.
The second phase scopes to build mutual understanding with the other stakeholders. All of them should agree with the steps, the structure and the consensual nature of the process. Owners’ committee or plenary will come to separate consultations with each one of the stakeholders (representatives of the local administration, real-estate developers, civil society, etc.). After this first circle, the owners will need an internal consultation to define convergences and divergences with each one of the stakeholders, build a summary and go back to them prior the third step of the process.
Phase one and two will be designed evaluated and monitored by the solution team. The project team will prepare detailed guidelines and recommendations on phase three by the end of the six months’ project. The purpose of the last phase is to lead to a commonly accepted and agreed plan with coherent planning and implementation tools for a short term, midterm and long-term basis. The final consensus must assure (i) the profit/ stake of the landowners; (ii) the investment opportunities for the developers; (iii) the alignment or the needed amendments on the national planning framework; and (iv) the qualities that the civic society would expect.
Workshops, consultations, events and meetings will be rescheduled or intensified if the negotiation fells into troubles. Implications will arise if the response of the owners’ group is slow or the other stakeholders are not responding promptly. Our solution is flexible in time and schedule and able to absorb these issues.
Participatory or collaborative planning procedures are quite common in literature, tested in various geographical and sectorial contexts. Our approach follows the principles from the state of the art but changes priorities, as described, in order to adjust to the particularities of the challenge.