rotondo selicato ctp_2011

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

mailto:[email protected]


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


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


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:




• 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.


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



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



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




Open Street Map Bari (Italy), focusing on some shops and services present in the area


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 …



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”



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.



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.



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.




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


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.



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.



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.



freedom needs responsibility ….



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.


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];



rotondo selicato ctp_2011

Technology

planning actions

form of planning

participatory planning

planning ctp

regional planning

opportunities opportunities

ucity paradigm

icts urban