From Engagement to Empowerment: Iterative Participatory Urbanism and Community Spatial Agency in the ECHO Project

Public housing in the Global South often prioritises the physical delivery of shelter at the expense of the social infrastructures needed to sustain collective life. In Malaysia’s Program Perumahan Rakyat (PPR), participatory efforts are frequently treated as brief consultative exercises that rarely reshape governance relations. This paper reconceptualises iterative participatory urbanism as a process through which community spatial agency is progressively formed through repeated engagement rather than isolated events. Unlike conventional participatory planning or co-production models centred on discrete consultation or project delivery, this approach frames participation as an evolving governance ecology. Drawing on a 12-month embedded case study of the ECHO Project at PPR Sri Cempaka, Kuala Lumpur, the study combines focus group discussions, participatory mapping, co-design workshops, and longitudinal facilitation observations to examine how residents’ relationship to shared space changed over time. Findings reveal a shift from passive expectations of state-led provision toward collective coordination, informal stewardship, and emerging shared governance practices. Spatial agency emerged not through design interventions alone but through relational continuity, visible responsiveness, and evolving shared responsibility. The study contributes to participatory urbanism and spatial agency scholarship while offering a practical framework for housing authorities and urban practitioners to institutionalise community stewardship within state-led housing systems.