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Public engagement can improve policy-making, bring diversified views and voices to policy decisions made. It can lead to better-informed programs and policies which are in accordance with the needs of the citizens. The public engagement process also strengthens the transparency and accountability to establish civic capacity (Katsonis, 2019). Planners have traditionally worked for the public interest (Sager, 2012). That is why most of a planner's time is spent on talking and interacting with people. This means that dialogue has the potential to change situations. It also means that communication between planners and the public can lead to shared information that, in turn, can be embedded in the planning process (Innes, 1998). As modern society is undergoing a participatory revolution, there is a need to identify new public participation methods, which means that there should be new ways of collaboration and interaction for joint learning (Bobbio, 2019). Local knowledge is critical in not only deciding plans but also implementing them fairly on ground. Public interaction is a dialogue between the government and the public as well as a dialogue between the various members of the public. The idea of participation should be understood as an act of thriving creativity rather than just one-way communication. This also promotes society as a living organism rather than a machine (Booher & Innes, 2005).
Given the above, evolution in ways public is engaged important. The information society in which we live today has information-based objects that are convenient and do more than what they are supposed to do (Innes, 1998). However, planners should focus on the assumptions behind these new ways before they are implemented, as these assumptions can hinder or facilitate public participation.
There is a potential to engage the public and develop lasting relationships through informal public engagement processes; people who fear speaking out or reservations about attending formal events can express their opinions more freely about the issues (Leong, Forester, & Decker, 2009). The planning authorities in municipalities pay attention to how to plan, develop and then provide services that meet the need of the communities. Planners engage themselves in all areas of city development and come with solutions for many problems like the rapid growth of urbanization and population (Krog, 2019). Planning authorities play an essential role in providing meaningful public engagement. Therefore, various approaches of participation were introduced for urban planning to enhance meaningful public engagement.
Public participation research in the community planning process mainly focuses on the design of participation activities and tensions there (Clark, 2020). The process inherent in accommodating such rapid urbanization raises the importance of employing sophisticated tools to engage the public in the decision-making on a variety of issues in urban planning.
Instead of telling the citizens what to do, citizens should be allowed to plan the future of the places they choose to inhabit (DCLG, 2011). In previous years, the world witnessed the emergence of SARS, Zika, and Ebola (Gadhi, 2020). In 2020, another unwelcome guest hit nations, known globally as the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19. It caused a severe disruption worldwide (Allain-Dupré, Chatry, Michalun, & Moisio, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has a vast impact on municipal governments, and it caused great harm to the inhabitants, services, employment, economics, and governmental institutions.