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E-democracy in collaborative
planning: a critical review
Francesco Selicato Francesco Rotondo
Dipartimento di Architettura e Urbanistica
Politecnico di Bari
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
"Cities, Technologies and Planning"CTP 11
June 19th - June 23th, 2011University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain
page 2
Questions for Today
Collaborative approach to planning: roles and relations with ICTs
ICTs for collaborative planning: threats and opportunities
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Conclusions
page 3
Collaborative approach to planning: roles and relations with ICTs
Urban and regional planning is more and more a collaborative and communicative process, where many actors with different
professional and cultural background interact usually holding conflicting interests (Duany and Zyberk, 2004; Forester, 1999;
Healey, 1997; Laurini, 2001)
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 4ICT and planning U-city conclusions
The classical methodologies and techniques for collecting local knowledge and instituting creative conflict management techniques
(such as brainstorming, focus groups and enacting scenarios) right up to participatory planning in the form of planning for real (Gibson, 1981), can all be implemented using informatics tools and especially the Web,
as a on line services “dispenser” (Flaxman, 2007).
The use of the ICTs in the experiences of collaborative planning place some questions as the following:
Collaborative approach to planning: roles and relations with ICTs
page 5ICT and planning U-city conclusions
ICTs for collaborative planning: threats and opportunities
• how best to collect, manage and summarize the inhabitants’ knowledge, generally expressed in descriptive form (stories, examples,
memories of the past...), which are difficult to “process” in computers and used as operative indications for the planning actions, which normally require prescriptive, regulating arguments (zoning, norms, etc.).• These are generally a highly time-consuming operations for participants and “facilitators”. • In the ICT collaborative planning experiences, the planner is mostly a trainer, a mediator, an urban virtual designer, in a distance and/or F/to/F participation process.
page 6
ICTs for collaborative planning: threats and opportunities
Some critical aspects
• The computer-mediated environment is certainly colder and less stimulating than a traditional face-to-face meeting
• The lower level of interaction occurring among our participants, particularly in the on-line sessions of same-time – different place type, is often aggravated by the lack of feedback among participants
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 7
ICTs for collaborative planning: threats and opportunities
Opportunities• The speed of accomplishment of some activities on-line, reducing or even eliminating geographical distance
• Transparency and traceability of the actions and opinions
• A well-constructed, continually updated web site favours participation of the absents
• Using ICT knowledge is ready to be implemented in a PPGIS
ICTs don’t eliminate the need for face-to-face meetings but it does allow them to be held in a more aware climate
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 8
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Wiki-based collaboration technologies, Web mapping,
cellular communications and geospatial positioning
have enlarged the possibility already offered by other
tools of the ICT for collaborative planning, already used
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 9
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
Open Street Map Bari (Italy), focusing on some shops and services present in the area
page 10
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
The concept of “user-generated content" has already known
in planning participation literature.
There are numerous examples of PPGIS where interested
individuals have offered input and feedback to professionals
and communities of interest in both roundtable and Web-
based settings.
What is different with Web 2.0 approach is the role assumed
by the community.
The Community is completely autonomous in producing
information …
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 11
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Turner coined the term “neogeography” explained as
“geographical techniques and tools used for personal
activities or for utilization by a non-expert group of users;
not formal or analytical”
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 12
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Meanwhile, Goodchild coined the term “Volunteered
Geographic Information” (or VGI) defined as the
harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate
geographic data provided voluntarily by individuals, who
create their own content by marking locations where
various events occurred or certain features exist.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 13
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Whilst technologies (e.g. GPS, remote sensing, etc.) can be useful in
producing new spatial data, VGI could be a useful and “cheap” way
to update and describe such data.
About this last possibility there is the necessity to determine how does an
organization assess the degree of trust of a new producer.
This question, is in our opinion, the fundamental one to improve this
tools in institutional activities.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 14
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Opportunities
Enlarging the possibilities to produce knowledge and geographical
information could be a powerful tool for improving
participation also in urban planning process.
Digital society could exploit these new possibilities to describe
common places, let emerging the geography of communities so
important for a planner to support deliberation in spatial
decision making.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 15
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
It is, in some sense,
a new and
independent way to
build, for each of
the inhabitants,
their own “image
of the city”, the
same that Lynch as
tried to describe in
its fundamental
work.
The classical image of Boston presented in the Lynch’s famous book, highlighting paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks
page 16
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
OpportunitiesThinking that the use of these tools it isn’t necessary related to one
plan process in particular, but it is a continuous activity, autonomously made by each volunteer,
after a period of intense use of “open street map” it becomes a wonderful and rich “geographical diary” of a community.
Planner could analyze this “on going map” to search for the social strongholds of the city by which organizing the plan, integrating them with the natural elements, characterizing the sites.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 17
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Opportunities
community maps created with VGI could have the advantage to be always available, updated and they could be a very useful base for more advanced studies made expressly for a planning process.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 18
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Risks for urban planning participation processThe possibility offered by the web 2.0 approach to every citizen to
become a ‘produsers’ (in the sense of Bruns, 2006) of geographical information is a very interesting novelty in planning process, but it could take planning action and debate into what we can call a “geo-information overload”.
Planning, is a delicate process in which the opinions of communities and stakeholders aren’t always the same.
So as in YouTube, every one could publish its images and comments about things happening, with geo-tagging we have the same freedom about geographical object.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 19
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
freedom needs responsibility ….
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 20
The U-city paradigm: opportunities and risks for urban planning participation
Risks for urban planning participation processSo, in theory (because until now experiences are very few), we will have
many different tags for the same spatial object, generating possible confusion in the same inhabitants and stakeholders.
The major risk in a “geo-information overload” era, could be, in our opinion, what the psychologist James Reason has called “confirmation bias” explained as the tendency to confirm an idea or a notice that we have learned, also if there are evidences which are demonstrating exactly the contrary.
We will also need to analyse the frequency of inputs let by the volunteers on the map, to comprehend the interest about places shown by communities.
ICT and planning U-city conclusions
page 21
Conclusions
In this so complex, fuzzy, social environment we can try to use PPGIS, ICTS and VGI to elicit and represent cognitive space, which we experiment and built with people in the experiences of collaborative planning.
Using VGI we’ll try to capture and translate ‘mental maps’ of boundaries, locations and zones into geo-referenced outputs.
In this very early stage of use, we have tried to highlight possible risks and opportunities of using VGI in collaborative planning.
“Geo-information overload” and “confirmation bias” seem to us very relevant question to face.
We need to use VGI for a better understanding of the tools offered, and this work want to be just a first contribution to comprehend their possible use.
ICT and planning U-city Conclusions
THANKS FOR YOUR
PATIENT ATTENTION!!! Francesco Selicato
Francesco Rotondo
Department of Architecture and Town Planning,Polytechnic of Bari, Technical University (Italy)
e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected];