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Chaotic growth and climate change have led to increased uncertainty in social-ecological systems, like urban areas, and have lowered their thresholds to withstand shocks, thus increasing their vulnerability. To reduce this effect, the concept of resilience is increasingly being applied in urban governance and planning. Public participation is seen as an attribute, which potentially increases the resilience of social-ecological systems.

What kind of public participation leads to resilience, and how, are questions which this chapter addresses. To answer these questions, this study focused on relevant literature regarding resilience and governance, and investigated the events related to the flooding of the Ramnadi river corridor in Pune, India. The governance structure within the Ramnadi river corridor was then analyzed using a causal loop diagram. By studying its nodes, linkages, and feedbacks, this chapter explores how public participation affects the resilience of the social-ecological system of the Ramnadi river corridor.

Public memory, a minimum sustained level of perpetual participation, and the presence of proactive institutions which can effectuate various levels and types of participation, have emerged as the qualities of public participation which increase the resilience of social-ecological systems. Based on the presence or absence of these qualities, a new typology of public participation is proposed here, namely the binary of continuous public participation versus event-based public participation. This distinction proves to be an effective indicator of whether an instantiation of public participation can lead to resilience. The applicability of this classification for designing interventions for placemaking has also been discussed.