Rethinking XR for Meaningful Participation

Despite XR’s growing role in participatory urban planning, most applications adopt a narrow, instrumental understanding of ‘participation’ as consultation or visualization. This paper combines a systematic literature review and a municipal case study to explore how XR can better support meaningful citizen participation. The literature review shows a growing interest in XR for engagement, yet conceptualizations of participation remain limited to communication and feedback. The case study of Aarhus Municipality’s participation model, however, demonstrates a more comprehensive and dialogic approach, emphasizing inclusivity, transparency, and continuous learning. Building on these insights, the paper investigates how XR technologies might be designed and deployed to align with such participatory principles. A speculative design experiment, CityShaper, illustrates how XR could embody dialogic, inclusive, and situated participation. The paper thereby contributes to ongoing debates on digital participation by proposing how XR can move beyond visualization toward genuinely participatory urban governance.