Planning from Below. Marta Harnecker

But, we reiterate, each level should not only discuss issues that correspond to it but should take into consideration the proposals made by other levels. More over, they should discuss and take a position regarding thematic priorities and large public works that the municipal council is proposing to carry out in the municipality. For example, a municipality leader might propose to build a hospital or university, or to create an overall plan for industrialization or agricultural and agro-industrial development to generate jobs and income for the population and produce as much as possible, on the basis of local capacities and potentialities. This is an example of how the municipality should propose public works that fall within its competencies, but these should be discussed and approved both at the territorial and the community level.

      183. In sum, at each level, its participatory entities should work on the basis of the priorities formulated at lower levels to come up with and present projects that fall within the responsibilities of this level. These, however, should be discussed and voted on by the corresponding lower level. That is, people participate in the municipal planning process primarily via the assemblies in their respective territorial areas and communities.

      184. It is important to note that throughout the first year of DPP at the municipal level, there will be elements of the municipal plan (territorial distribution, allocation of available resources, etc.) that will, by necessity, have to be worked out from above by the municipal council, even if they are later submitted to public debate. If significant opposition emerges to these proposals, the community and territorial assemblies will have to submit alternative proposals to the Municipal Planning Assembly.

      26. In Venezuela, an ample legal basis for participatory planning exists in the Constitution and in a series of laws such as the Organic Law of Public and Popular Planning, the Organic Law of Popular Power, the Organic Law of the Federal Government Council and its regulation, the Organic Law of Local Public Planning Councils, the Organic Law of Communal Councils, the Organic Law of Communes, and the Organic Law of Municipal Public Power, among others. The situation is the same in Ecuador. There we have guidelines established in the Constitution, the National Plan for Good Living, the Organic Code of Territorial Zoning, Autonomies and Decentralization, the Organic Code of Planning and Public Financing and the Organic Law of Citizens’ Participation. However, this is not the situation in the majority of countries, and even in those that have advanced a lot in this regard, it is possible that the issue of decentralization and other issues have not advanced far enough. That is why in many cases it will be necessary to move in advance of existing regulations, while ensuring we are not operating illegally. Ideally the municipalities that want to implement our proposal on participatory planning should be legally exempt by the central state from any blocking legislation so they will have full freedom to experiment with this new form of building a new society with the people.

       CHAPTER IV. NECESSARY CONDITIONS FOR DECENTRALISED PARTICIPATORY PLANNING

      185. The Venezuelan and Kerala experiences have led us to conclude that the following conditions must exist in order to ensure full peoples’ participation in the planning process:

      (1) Identification or creation of suitable planning units,

      (2) Decentralization of competencies,

      (3) Decentralization of material and human resources,

      (4) Teams to help kick start the process,

      (5) Explaining the process to the population and key actors involved in it,

      (6) Training of participants,

      (7) Prioritize according to capacities,

      (8) Creation of a good database, and

      (9) Information and transparency.

      186. The existence of public policies like those in Kerala has been key to creating these conditions.

1) CREATION OF SUITABLE GEOGRAPHIC PLANNING UNITS

      187. The first step that a municipal council must take if it wants to implement a process of participatory planning is to create suitable planning units within which this process can be carried out. In the next few paragraphs we discuss the problems inherited from past divisions of territories and administrative levels and areas.

      188. This is one of the most serious problems that those in local government who advocate an increasingly participatory and protagonistic democracy face.

      189. In many cases in Latin America, geographical and administrative subdivisions exist that date back to colonial times (such as parishes) that no longer correspond to any rational needs. There are numerous municipalities that have large populations, enormous barrios (neighborhoods), much bigger than many municipalities, side by side with extremely small municipalities. These distortions have negative repercussions on a just, equitable and efficient territorial distribution of resources and make it more difficult for the population to participate. That is why it is sometimes necessary to move towards a new political-administrative division of the national territory.

      190. Small rural villages tend to be more suited to people’s participation. Existing sub-divisions in densely populated urban municipalities often need to be further sub-divided.

      191. In many places, people have gone about establishing their own sub-divisions, using criteria such as demarcation of barrios, administrative zones and sub-zones, parishes, villages, electoral districts and other forms of municipal sub-division.

      192. Each case needs to be analyzed on the basis of the experience and opinions of local residents. Some geographic and administrative spaces will need to be sub-divided while others will need to be merged.²⁷ There will also be cases where it will be necessary to go beyond borders that have been established as part of the political-administrative sub-division of the country. This is what occurred in the experience headed by mayor Julio Chavez in the municipality of Torres, in the state of Lara in Venezuela, where in 2007, new communal areas were created by merging communal councils from two adjacent parishes.²⁸ Some thing similar occurred in Libertador municipality, Carabobo, where Argenis Loreto, who was elected mayor in 2000, and his team worked on a subdivision of the municipality into what they denominated “social territories” that brought together various communities. In this case, some territories even extended into neighboring municipalities.²⁹

      193. Probably in the majority of municipalities in Latin America, the first step that a municipal government should take in initiating a process of PP is the establishment of territorial subdivisions that facilitate the decentralization of resources and brings government closer to the people. This process of geographic demarcation will only be necessary at the start of the process of municipal PP. For the ensuing years, geographic sub-divisions will already exist, even if it might be useful to periodically revise them and work out some modifications based on experience.

      194. If a national prevailing procedure about how to divide the territory does not exist, the ideal scenario would involve the municipal government developing a proposal for how to geographically divide up the municipality as a prior step to starting the actual planning process. This task should be carried out by the municipal government with the support of its technical experts, but should be ratified by the respective assemblies of the different levels of the process.

2) DECENTRALISING COMPETENCIES

      195. In cases where national policies aimed towards transferring competencies from municipalities to geographic and administrative subdivisions (parishes, communes, rural villages, etc.) do not exist, another step that municipal governments should take, one that is more complex than the first one, is the decentralization of competencies to the territorial sub-divisions, applying the principle of subsidiarity, which we referred to above in paragraphs 40, 132 and 148.

      196. This implies transferring to lower levels all the responsibilities they can take on their hands, while reserving the rest for higher-up levels. It is probably possible to transfer competencies in resource