Does Public Participation Matter to Planning? Urban Sculpture Reception in the Context of Elite-Led Planning in Shanghai

Scholars have long debated how effective public participation is in urban planning. While most research was designed to assess the effect of public participation, the knowledge gap concerns whether urban planning would receive negative reception without public participation due to failure in managing people’s emotions. One of the underlying reasons is that public participation is crucial to public emotion management. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a case of public planning, and more specifically, the effects on public art reception when the planning project is developed by elites, without the involvement and participation of residents. Public art planning involves substantial symbolic and emotional components, and therefore constitutes a suitable case study. This research examines urban sculpture planning in Shanghai. The primary research method is a questionnaire survey, completed by 244 respondents. We argue that public participation is not the sole determinant of public art reception; other factors, particularly locality, also matter: an authoritarian-style urban sculpture planning creates a unanimous reverence and appreciation for flagship art projects on prominent public venues in central cities. However, people’s feelings towards sculptures vary in neighborhoods; people are more likely to resist imposed artworks in the environment of their everyday life. Finally, we conclude that a lack of public participation does not always result in a negative reception to cultural projects on the part of the public; however, this lack of public participation is, nevertheless, culturally unsustainable.