What silence knows - Planning, public participation and environmental values

While fraught with ambiguities, support for greater public participation in environmental policy making is experiencing a renaissance amongst sections of government and academia, particularly within the field of land-use plan ning. There is concern within this cohort that the planning system silences public voices through its current mechanisms for community involvement. Pr oponents of participation often presuppose that more public participation w ill produce both 'better' decisions and environmental benefits, but to date research has focused on the front-end, or 'processes', of participation ra ther than the 'products' that result, While procedural aspects of public pa rticipation are important it is imperative that critical consideration is a lso given to what emerges from the participation that is being exalted. Thi s paper addresses this concern by focusing on the products of a public part icipation exercise conducted in Luton, South-east England in order to consi der what it is that 'silence knows'.