Recently, a growing attention has been paid to citizen participation in the area of urban planning. In addition to formal participation, which is required by law, increasing numbers of cities offer informal participation or the citizens request such involvement in urban planning. There are a number of ways to provide a platform for informal engagement, such as workshops or citizens' forums. However, these methods are not enshrined in law. In other words, implementation of informal citizen participation is left to the discretion of local municipalities. Therefore, not every municipality actively encourages informal participation. The question is then, why do only some cities practice informal participation? And furthermore why do citizens act differently across municipalities? The theoretical approach to answer these questions is the concept of the intrinsic logic of cities. The underlying argument is that the public participation processes depend on the logic structure of each respective city. Therefore, specific methods and implementation strategies of citizen participation processes are locally formed and can hardly be transferred from one city to another.

This thesis project specifically examines the public participation processes of the city Darmstadt in the transformation of former US bases into residential quarters. Participant observation and qualitative content analysis were applied as research methodology. Among other findings, the research demonstrates that the time structures in Darmstadt were notably slow. Furthermore, citizens in Darmstadt exhibited particularly strong commitment and willingness to civil engagement. This engagement is not just project related, in contrast to the Germany-wide trend.