Analyzing the patterns of ICT utilization for online public participatory planning in Queensland, Australia

Public participation in urban planning includes involving, informing, and consulting the public in planning, management, and other decision-making activities. It is an important part of the planning process, providing opportunity and encouragement for members of the public to express their views. Despite the usefulness of new technologies, however, the majority of Internet and GIS applications have not been very successful in encouraging significant public participation. One reason for this is the lack of readiness in accepting ICTs, both on the part of planning agencies, such as local councils, and members of the public. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the readiness of local councils in Queensland, Australia, to implement online urban planning. Local government authorities (LGAs) comprise the third tier of government in Australia. In Queensland, the local councils have statutory powers over land use zoning and the development approval processes. LGAs develop and implement strategic and local plans, including those for land use. This article considers the extent to which local councils are willing to embrace ICTs as a public participation tool and the extent to which households might be ready to access new computer technologies

Urban planning, public participation and digital technology: App development as a method of generating citizen involvement in local planning processes

There has been a recent shift in England towards empowering citizens to shape their neighbourhoods. However, current methods of participation are unsuitable or unwieldy for many people. In this paper, we report on ChangeExplorer, a smart watch application to support citizen feedback, to investigate the extent to which digital wearables can address barriers to participation in planning. The research contributes to both technology-mediated citizen involvement and urban planning participation methods. The app leverages in-situ, quick interactions encouraging citizens to reflect and comment on their environment. Taking a case study approach, the paper discusses the design and deployment of the app in a local planning authority through interviews with 19 citizens and three professional planners. The paper discusses the potential of the ChangeExplorer app to address more conceptual issues, and concludes by assessing the degree to which the technology raises awareness of urban change and whether it could serve as a gateway to more meaningful participatory methods

Public Participation Using 3D Web-Based City Models: Opportunities for E-Participation in Kisumu, Kenya

Public participation is significant for the success of any urban planning project. However, most members of the general public are not planning professionals and may not understand the technical details of a 2D paper-based plan, which might hamper their participation. One way to expand the participation of citizens is to present plans in well-designed, user-friendly and interactive platforms that allow participation regardless of the technical skills of the participants. This paper investigates the impacts of the combined use of 3D visualization and e-participation on public participation in Kisumu, Kenya. A 3D city model, created with CityEngine2016, was exported into a web-based geoportal and used as a Planning Support System in two stakeholder workshops in order to evaluate its usability. In order to assess the workshops 300 questionnaires were given out to planning practitioners and interview were done with key informants. Five indicators were developed for evaluating the usability of the 3D model while the usability of e-participation was evaluated using communication, collaboration and learning as indicators. Results showed that effectiveness and efficiency varied within different professional groups while the questionnaires showed strong preference for e-participation methods, especially Short Message Servicess/Unstructured Supplementary Service Data and emails. The study concludes that the use of 3D visualization and e-participation has the potential to improve the quality and quantity of public participation and recommends further research on the subject

Transparenting Transparency: Intial Empirics and Policy Applications

Major conceptual contributions of a number of Nobel-laureates in putting forth a framework linking the citizenry's right to know and access to information with development, have already had a major influence in various fields. However, implementation of transparency-related reforms on the ground remains checkered around the globe. Further, in contrast with other dimensions of governance -such as rule of law and regulatory burden-, there is a gap between the extent of the conceptual contributions in the transparency field and the progress on its measurement and empirical analysis, which has been wanting. Our paper is a contribution attempting to partly fill these empirical and policy-related gaps. We contribute to empirics by undertaking an initial construction of a transparency index for 194 countries based on over twenty 20 independent sources. An Unobserved Component Model (UCM) was used to generate the country ratings and the margins of error. The indices comprise an aggregate transparency index with two sub-components: economic/institutional transparency, and political transparency. The results emphasize variance. Exemplary transparency is not the exclusive domain of a particular region, and there are transparency-related challenges in countries in each region and income categories. Further, there is significant within-country variation, with large differences in performance between economic/institutional and political dimensions of transparency. Mindful of the challenges in inferring causality, we also find that transparency is associated with better socio-economic and human development indicators, as well as with higher competitiveness and lower corruption. Much progress can be attained without requiring inordinate amount of resources, since transparency reforms can be substantial net 'savers' of public resources, and often can serve as a more efficient and less financially costly substitute to creating additional regulations and/or regulatory or governance bodies. We provide a number of concrete examples of specific transparency-related reforms within a strategic framework, as well as a brief country illustration - the case of Chile.

Web-based PPGIS for Wilhelmsburg, Germany: An Integration of Interactive GIS-based Maps with an Online Questionnaire

The aim of this paper is to study the implementation of a Web-based public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) with open-source technology and its integration with an online questionnaire. Its theoretical foundations are based on previous work in PPGISs, online surveys, field research, and map-based surveys. The concept of a PPGIS that interlinks interactive GIS maps with an online questionnaire was developed. The concept was implemented with open-source technology and tested in a public participation process designed with the European project SWITCH. The study case was taken from a city district, Wilhelmsburg, in Hamburg, Germany. The combination of the GIS maps combined with the online questionnaire enabled the inhabitants of Wilhelmsburg to draw their answers directly into the online maps. The results of the participation processes were saved directly into the central database. The paper concludes with a critical discussion and directions for further research

Future land use changes in a peri-urban context: local stakeholder views

Future land use/cover change (LUCC) analysis has been increasingly applied to spatial planning instruments in the last few years. Nevertheless, stakeholder participation in the land use modelling process and analysis is still low. This paper describes a methodology engaging stakeholders (from the land use planning, agriculture, and forest sectors) in the building and assessment of future LUCC scenarios. We selected as case study the Torres Vedras Municipality (Portugal), a peri-urban region near Lisbon. Our analysis encompasses a participatory workshop to analyse LUCC model outcomes, based on farmer LUCC intentions, for the following scenarios: A0 - current social and economic trend (Business as Usual); A1 - regional food security; A2 - climate change; and B0 - farming under urban pressure. This analysis allowed local stakeholders to develop and discuss their own views on the most plausible future LUCC for the following land use classes: artificial surfaces, non-irrigated arable land, permanently irrigated land, permanent crops and heterogeneous agricultural land, pastures, forest and semi-natural areas, and water bodies and wetlands. Subsequently, we spatialized these LUCC views into a hybrid model (Cellular Automata - Geographic Information Systems), identifying the most suitable land conversion areas. We refer to this model, implemented in NetLogo, as the stakeholder-LUCC model. The results presented in this paper model where, when, why, and what conversions may occur in the future in regard to stakeholders' points of view. These outcomes can better enable decision-makers to perform land use planning more efficiently and develop measures to prevent undesirable futures, particularly in extreme events such as scenarios of food security, climate change, and/or farming under pressure.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Toward Cyborg PPGIS: exploring socio-technical requirements for the use of web-based PPGIS in two municipal planning cases, Stockholm region, Sweden

Web-based Public Participation Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS) are increasingly used for surveying place values and informing municipal planning in contexts of urban densification. However, research is lagging behind the rapid deployment of PPGIS applications. Some of the main opportunities and challenges for the uptake and implementation of web-based PPGIS are derived from a literature review and two case studies dealing with municipal planning for urban densification in the Stockholm region, Sweden. A simple clustering analysis identified three interconnected themes that together determine the performance of PPGIS: (i) tool design and affordances; (ii) organisational capacity; and (iii) governance. The results of the case studies augment existing literature regarding the connections between the different socio-technical dimensions for the design, implementation and evaluation of PPGIS applications in municipal planning. A cyborg approach to PPGIS is then proposed to improve the theoretical basis for addressing these dimensions together

Assessing the positional accuracy of perceptual landscape data: A study from Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy

Online GIS-based applications that combine mapping and public participation to collect citizens' voices on their surrounding environment are a way to collect original spatial data that do not already figure in authoritative data sets. However, these applications, relying on non-expert users, might produce spatial data of insufficient quality for the purpose for which they are collected. This article presents an approach for assessing the positional accuracy of vague landscape features, using the results from a map-based survey completed by a group of volunteers in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy. The spatial section of the survey, gathering both georeferenced data and textual information on the mapping activity, allows the assessment of whether there is a correspondence between the mapped features and the intended map locations. The findings reveal a greater accuracy among participants in completing the mapping activity relating to degraded sites than to those of beauty

Developing a Visual Tool to Encourage Public Participation in Decision-Making Processes for Intervening in an Urban Historical Context

Citizens can be meaningfully involved in multiple phases of the urban planning process from decision-making to implementation via a dedicated online platform through which they can interact with planners and decision-makers. In historical contexts, local people are essential resources for decision-makers seeking critical local information needed for effective planning and intervention—including what those citizens recall from the past about the area’s social values and the built environment and what they imagine and hope for their neighborhood’s future. This public knowledge, collected through storytelling and mapping, can play a fundamental role in shaping the framework for neighborhood rehabilitation plans. As a foundation for designing an online visual questionnaire to collect local knowledge and understand the views and expectations of local people, this study focuses on theoretical ideas to define a framework for an online visual questionnaire tool. The tool presented provides a common visual language that people can easily understand and use whatever their social class, education, or background. It also has the benefit of enabling citizens and planners to interact directly regardless of their geographical location. To proposing a framework for the online visual questionnaire, the first step was to review some existing visual tools and methods, including analog used for community engagement and digital used in urban planning to encourage and support public participation. Through an analysis of these methods, some important variables and criteria were identified that further our understanding of citizens’ perceptions of their neighborhoods. The next step, as part of a larger study, will be examining a historical public space, including a bazaar, hammam, and cistern—located in the historical context of Yazd— a central city in Iran registered as a cultural heritage site by UNESCO— as a case study with the larger goal of identifying some specifi

Apuntes para la “Adecuación Estructural y Funcional del Registro Único de la Verdad"

En este trabajo nos proponemos analizar algunos aspectos conceptuales y metodológicos de la Adecuación Estructural y Funcional del Registro Único de la Verdad (RUV), entidad creada por ley 12.498 con el objeto de conocer con exactitud lo ocurrido durante la última dictadura cívico-militar. La Secretaría de Derechos Humanos de la provincia de Buenos Aires, designada como órgano de aplicación resulta responsable de la custodia y del acceso público a los datos del RUV. En esta segunda obligación - y en conjunción con las normativas de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) - el derecho a la verdad se concibe en su doble carácter: colectivo, permitiendo un acceso público a la información esencial para el desarrollo de los sistemas democráticos; y particular, a fin de que toda víctima o sus familiares puedan conocer lo que realmente ocurrió, configurándose esto en una función reparatoria. El corpus utilizado se compone con la normativa vigente relacionada al RUV y la experiencia cotidiana de los trabajadores del área que recolectan, analizan y preservan los datos vinculados con las violaciones de Derechos Humanos en formatos diversos. Se presenta el desafío de componer al RUV como archivo analítico y como una interfaz de acceso a información pública.Mesa 13: Los marcos sociales de la memoria. Memoria, política e historia del pasado reciente argentinoFacultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació