Learning from Practice in the Face of Conflict and IntegratingTechnical Expertise with Participatory Planning: Critical Commentaries on the Practice of Planner-ArchitectLaurence Sherman Mediation and Collaboration in Architecture and Community Planning: A Profile ofLarry Sherman Practical Elements of Facilitative Leadership and Collaborative Problem Solving Where Do Collaborative Planning Instincts Come From? Lessons from the Field Words, Bodies, Things

The contribution focus on the following topic: Learning from Practice in the Face of Conflict and Integrating Technical Expertise with Participatory Planning. it explores the role of bodies, words and things in such a way: 1. Words are important, but “talk is cheap”, warn some game theory scholars, so words can be bungled, or exchanged in a pointless or misleading manner. To make sure that exchanges of words are effective, dialogue between people must be governed with intelligence and sensitivity, and it is here that the facilitator’s work becomes decisive and that the architect or planner also has to perform the role of facilitator or mediator of the process, at least a little. 2. People’s bodies are very important in participation: they complete, or strengthen, and they can also change the meaning of the words. They can make them more effective or more dangerous. The interaction in decision making is a body-to-body, face-toface relationship. The bodies move, they turn one way or the other, they impulsively grasp a cup of coffee, they bend down to whisper in secret negotiations, they stand up to shout out their reasons when the discussion becomes animated. 3. But in our opinion more important still are the other “things” used in the interactive processes: the representation tools, the maps, the plastic model, the coloured chips.Without these objects, the discussion would be more abstract and rhetorical.