When urban planning creates passive citizens

 

Ilyes BELLAGHA
September 8th, 2025  (leer en castellano)

The article analyzes how participatory urbanism and architecture produce passive citizens instead of collective actors, exploring family, local, and national connections in the creation of civic space. 

Introduction

Contemporary urban planning often adopts an air of democratic modernity. There is talk of citizen participation, open workshops, and the co-construction of public spaces. However, behind these seductive words, the reality is far more unsettling: what is being built is not civic space, but a passive, structured, and disciplined citizenry. Residents are invited to "participate" in order to validate choices already made, as if their role were limited to ticking a box of consent.

This drift did not arise from nowhere. It is the fruit of an ideology inherited from the Enlightenment, where the individual was sacralized as the measure of all things. Urban planning and architecture, by focusing on this isolated individual, have lost sight of reality: a society is never simply the sum of its parts. It is a web of connections, a matrix of solidarities and conflicts that far transcend the individual scale.

Ibn Khaldun had foreseen this with his notion of "asabiyya": the strength of a group lies in the cohesion and solidarity that bind its members. Marx confirmed this by demonstrating that economic and political structures condition the very forms of collective life. Ignoring these truths condemns participatory urbanism to be merely a staged performance, an illusion of democracy that masks the centralization of decisions and the imposition of a single model.

The question is crucial: do we want to create vibrant civic spaces, or continue producing passive citizens, subjected to obedience under the guise of participation?

1. The Illusion of Individualistic Rationality

The observation is blatant: individualism dominates urban planning thought. Even those who claim to be rational are only so within a bubble where the individual is sacralized. This methodological approach confuses observation with scientific truth. It isolates man from his social, economic, and cultural contexts, and then attempts to explain his behavior as if it were a laboratory experiment. However, a real society cannot be dissected into isolated pieces.

2. Society as a Matrix

Society can only be understood as a matrix, in the simplest sense of the term. A matrix is ​​a table of interconnected elements: by changing a single value, the entire system is transformed. Thus, a family, a neighborhood, a nation are not sums of individuals, but networks of interactions, solidarities, and tensions. Ibn Khaldun understood this perfectly with his notion of "asabiyya," the cohesive force that unites human groups. Without it, no society can endure.

3. The Forgetting of the Principle of Coherence (Averroes)

Today, much of mainstream thought has forgotten Averroes' principle that "two truths cannot contradict each other." Instead of seeking coherence, we settle for tautologies. For example, saying that “citizens don’t participate because they are passive” proves nothing. It’s a self-referential phrase, a hollow wheel. Tautology replaces analysis, and urban planning sinks into circular discourses where axiom and conclusion are confused.

4. Participatory Architecture as Obedience

Participatory architecture has become an illustrative example of these contradictions. Presented as a democratic advance, it is often nothing more than a process of “disguised obedience.” Residents are invited to give their opinions, but always within a predetermined framework, where central decisions are never questioned. Participation then becomes a ritual: it reassures institutions, gives the illusion of democracy, but does not generate true social transformations.

5. The Marxist Approach: Beyond Simplification

Marx had already demonstrated that a social group is not simply the sum of its individuals. Society is structured by power relations, inequalities, and material conditions that influence behavior. To think that citizen participation can be "pure" or neutral is to ignore this reality. In every urban project, there are divergent interests, implicit hierarchies, and economic forces that shape the final outcome. Citizenship is not decreed; it is earned. 

Conclusion

A civic space is not manufactured through technocratic procedures, nor is a society created by simply adding up isolated individuals. Citizenship is not a backdrop, a slogan, or a checkbox in a participatory workshop. It is the product of a collective history, a shared memory, and interwoven family, local, and national ties that give meaning to coexistence.

To continue thinking about urban planning from the perspective of the sacralized individual is to condemn society to shortsightedness and the reproduction of sterile models. Eternally restarting an old car that never started, under the pretext of participation, leads nowhere.

It is time to abandon this illusion. To think of society as a living matrix, as Ibn Khaldun, Averroes, and Marx each taught in their own way, is to recognize that the citizen only acquires meaning in their relationships with others. It is also to accept that true participation cannot be reduced to obedience, but must become an act of emancipation and collective creation.

The challenge is clear: do we want passive citizens in showcase cities, or active citizens in vibrant spaces? The answer won't come from above. It depends on our capacity to reinvent, together, the very conditions of the commons. 

 

Source: https://www.legrandsoir.info/quand-l-urbanisme-fabrique-des-citoyens-passifs.html