Local Community Development and the Participatory Planning Approach: A Review of Theory and Practice

Abstract

This study tries to put forward the argument that, much as the Participatory Approach has in theory been praised and given high international prominence as a possible solution to addressing community development issues, its practical application still leaves a lot to be desired. Practically, it remains to be seen as an approach whose islands of knowledge continue to be unknown, some invisible and yet others denied from the mainstream of practice. The paper makes this observation from a study conducted in Ghana on the use of the approach to address local community development needs. Specifically, the aim was to establish the link between the theoretical knowledge of the approach and its practical application