Good citizenship and plan implementation

Local planning instruments or schemes are reportedly complex and difficult for the general community to navigate, interpret and apply to development application proposals. This complexity of navigation, interpretation and application raises the question about the legitimacy of the deliberative democratic process and the conditions under which a “good citizen” might participate in notifiable development assessment scenarios where submissions from the general community are sought. The value of plan implementation through development assessment as a tool for agonistic engagement in a pluralist democracy is often overlooked in favour of consensus seeking plan-making and indeed relegated to a lesser valued, procedural, bureaucratic process. The academic literature supports the notion that development assessment is the planning process through which the community most actively and passionately interact with plans. It also suggests that communities are more likely to engage with site specific processes that impact directly upon them rather than abstract and remote planning policy processes. Using a case study approach this paper will use content and discourse analysis tools to ascertain the complexity of language used in an Australian planning scheme. The study will also map the processes and steps involved for a non-planner to navigate and apply the planning scheme to a development application in order to lodge a properly made submission. It is anticipated that the paper will determine the complexity of language and process contained within a planning scheme and if such language and processes may place the planner in a position of ‘expert’ to reinforce a power relationship between professional planners and the community in plan implementation

An Ontology-based Model for Urban Planning Communication

Abstract. Urban planning projects are complex and involve multiple actors ranging from urban planners to inhabitants. These actors differ greatly in their background or their centres of interest. The main objective of our research is contributing to a better communication of urban planning projects between the various actors involved. With this intention, we defined an ontology-based model whose main characteristics are, on the one hand, the semantic integration in a knowledge base of the urban knowledge coming from various sources such as GIS databases, master plans, local plans or any other document and, on the other hand, the modelling of the centre of interest of an urban actor. This models can then be used to generate adapted user interfaces to present the project's data and knowledge according to each actor's background and interests