Community Empowerment through Participatory Planning: experiences of a mining town in Korea

This research paper examines the interactions between planning practices aiming for the developmental reconstruction of a local so-ciety and actual changes onto the society. For the purpose, the re-search measures four procedural characteristics in the voluntary planning practice in a declining mining town; it also analyzes three dimensions of community empowerment in the mountainous town Churam. The paper demonstrates that each characteristics of the four procedural variables in planning practices contributes to the rel-ative dimensions of community empowerment, and that each one of the three dimensions of community empowerment exerts an influ-ence on the constitution of actual planning practices, reversely. Based on the case study, the paper concludes that there exists a mutual causality between planning practices and social develop-ment, depending on participatory measures for local people in the planning processes. Drawing on the conclusion, the paper suggests the significance of participatory planning processes in socio-political reconstruction of local communities; by the same token, it also legiti-mizes the understanding of local governments’ public planning not only as an economic enterprise but also as a socio-political one.