Gouldman, Steven E. 1994. Applied Anthropology, Participatory Planning and the USF Area Neighborhood Planning. Abstract: In January 1992 the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners directed its Planning and Development Management Department to conduct a planning study of the area surrounding the University of South Florida (USF). The purpose of the study was to produce plans addressing future development, zoning and current social problems. This thesis contains the results of research aimed at facilitating the achievement of the products and focuses on citizen participation in planning. According to the enabling staff report, the study was to be fully participatory, involving a wide range of community interests. This participatory process was not realized. The thesis thus seeks to determine why the Department failed to secure extensive community involvement. As a vehicle for organization, interpretation and for identification of recommendations, Spicer's (1976:341) "emic-holistic-historical-comparative approach" is employed. Utilizing Spicer's prescription, a description of the County's first participatory neighborhood planning effort is provided. Included is an examination of the project's history, past and present participatory planning approaches elsewhere, and an account of citizen participation in the USF study. It is argued that the study was prompted by the concerns of two independent sources, each of which helped to define area problems and contribute to the strategy for addressing the problems. It is shown that participation in the project was limited to a small group of community leaders who were formally co-opted, absorbed into the Department's administrative stll ture to satisfy the Comrnissioners' mandate. Finally, it is suggested that the failure to extensively involve citizens was influenced by the County bureaucracy's orientation, characterized by a tendency to stress obedience and authority rather than substantive participation. The concluding chapter provides recommendations for participatory planning and a discussion of the relevance of applied anthropology to participatory planning. The recommendations are founded on the idea "that people must be enabled to do something other than respond to outside initiatives, and do so in effective and satisfying ways" (Kushner 1973:xvi). "Only thus," as Kushner (1973:xvi) says, "can the members of a community develop the sense of self-reliance and capacity to cope directly with their world as they define it."