Is the standardisation of public participation squeezing place from planning?

Place and public participation are vital concepts in geography, urban planning scholarship, and practice. Yet the relationship between place and participation is wrought with tension. While place and participation have fused in generative, expansive endeavours that focus on belonging, stewardship and community, there is also evidence of place being squeezed out of participatory planning through the increasing use of standardising frameworks for public participation, particularly in settler colonial contexts. The take‐up of such standardised approaches elevates questions on whether participation will be harnessed to reinscribe settler‐colonial power dynamics and extractive planning approaches. This article explores insights from interviews and policy analysis conducted in Victoria, Australia, to investigate whether the standardisation of participation is squeezing place out of planning practice and what this means for geographical research. In doing so, we set out how standardising participation risks sidelining place and its different spatialities within and across cities, rendering participation another tool of extractive capitalism.