What is the relationship between sustainable development and public participation?
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Answer:
Public Participation (PP) in sustainable development helps the decision makers to acquire information about the public’s preferences. So it plays a vital role in the decisions about choice of projects and formulates its design policies. PP is designed to help assure that the people’s will is done; it gives the opportunity for people to be heard and to understand what will be done in a specific project. On a legality side, PP gives legitimacy for decisions, support for plans and builds trust in government. A vested interest in PP had grown in Egypt and in most other developed countries, the public became much more concerned about participation and involvement in governmental decision making processes than they had been before. For that, the confidence between the public and decision makers has increased. This paper aims to design the PP process for the Sidi Gaber railway station development project, Alexandria, Egypt. It will discuss the methods of PP practice and highlights the importance of the participation process in fulfilling people’s needs and requirements, it explains the benefits that will be gained in the future by enriching environmental democracy. The paper concludes that stakeholders do have influence over decisions and the government should have the ability to manage the conflicts, to deal with anger and aggressive behaviour and to gain the public trust instead of mistrust by ignoring PP. Sidi Gaber station has a special location, a unique architectural style and a historical value; so the research carried on a questionnaire to know the