Local authorities can benefit from using Urban Rooms as mechanisms to widen participation in their local area. Urban Rooms can be effective in opening up participation to marginalised and under-represented groups who wouldn’t usually have access to or contribute to the more conventional forms of consultation and engagement. In this way, the Urban Room is breaking down the traditional barriers that exist in public involvement in placemaking, offering a space for a much more inclusive, informed and creative form of direct democracy.

An Urban Room can offer local people the opportunity to contribute their knowledge, ideas and experiences to local planning frameworks, regeneration strategies and more specific development plans. The situated nature of the Urban Room means that this engagement
can go beyond merely gauging public opinion through conventional methods of consultation and can embrace more active participation of communities over time.
 

An Urban Room can create the space for a local authority to:

• offer local people a welcoming and accessible introduction to the processes of placemaking

• test and develop more engaged, inclusive and process-led planning approaches and frameworks

• build agency, cooperation and support within communities

• empower community interests in the specific or general development of local places

• open up to new and overlooked local ideas, skills, knowledges and networks

• evidence meaningful and inclusive community participation for current and future funders