Participation in a large Arctic city:the possibilities of PPGIS for improving interaction

Abstract Like innumerable areas worldwide, northern and Arctic areas are experiencing rapid urbanization. The land is often publicly owned in the main, and there are many interests focusing on the same areas. Different activities lead to specific challenges in land use management in regard to public participation. There are guidelines and legal norms for participation in Finland from the municipality to the ministry level, but the style and rate of participation vary a lot from city to city. In this article the potential of public participatory geographic information systems (PPGIS) is examined in the Arctic city, Rovaniemi. The research questions are: How has participation in land use planning and decision-making been implemented in the context of sparsely populated Arctic city the past and present times? How do the interviewees see the potential of the use of PPGIS? Attitudes towards PPGIS were positive, but the implementation of all types of participation data, such as PPGIS data, was seen as vague and weak. Challenges of the participation were associated with poor communication, insufficient information, and lack of trust. Nature values and local opinions were considered to be at risk of being overshadowed by economic values

Tourism resort users’ participation in planning:testing the public participation geographic information system method in Levi, Finnish Lapland

Abstract It is a challenging task to get tourists involved in tourism planning. In addition, it is often believed that local authorities and tourism companies have an adequate understanding of what tourists prefer or need and how local people’s interests can be integrated in tourism planning. Regardless, the tourism business is simply dependent on tourists — whether they want to come to a resort again or not. This article examines how the method of internet-based public participatory geographic information system (PPGIS) serves in gathering tourists’ and locals’ views about their favourite places at the Levi tourism resort in northern Finland. By using the PPGIS method it was not only possible to find clusters of favourite places, but also several single places of interest. The study revealed technical challenges in using PPGIS software. The quality and usability of the information and the method are discussed in relation to tourism planning

Polkuja luontoon:Levin kesäreittiverkoston kehittäminen käyttäjäkokemuksia ja ekologista tietoa yhdistäen

Abstract Tourism season in Lapland is mainly winter. Only one quarter of the registered overnight stays take place in snowless seasons in Lapland. Therefore lots of efforts are made to develop summer tourism. Recreational trails are an important part of this development work. Conventional interviews and surveys produce user-based knowledge that seldom ends up into a system of land-use planning, since information is not georeferenced. This article introduces two methods; one is able to collect user knowledge broadly and comprehensively, the other processes it for trail planning from perspectives of summer and wellness tourism. First, tourists’ and locals’ views about natural areas of the Levi tourism resort were collected with internet-based public participatory geographic information system (PPGIS). The inquiry produced almost three hundred georeferenced favorite places and plenty of descriptive verbal information. This knowledge on strengths, weaknesses and development needs of places was complemented with dozen interviews of locals. The user-based knowledge was combined with ecological knowledge on places that are relevant to nature experiences and wellbeing benefits of nature with the help of GIS-method in order to identify ”hot spots for forest bathing”. The twenty hot spots do not involve only forests but also waterfronts, mires and meadows outside the reach of the official trails but having wellbeing benefits or being important to the users. The Levi network of nature areas was developed in order to give model for land-use and trail planning to avoid the challenges caused by seasonality and to enhance sustainable tourism for other resorts to apply

The relationship between people’s activities and values with the protection level and biodiversity

Abstract We investigated how people’s recreational activities, values, and land use preferences are related to the protection level, biodiversity and cultural heritage values of nature-based tourism areas in northern Finland. We assessed peoples’ opinions using a public participation geographic information system (PPGIS) and analyzed the data together with spatial biodiversity and cultural heritage data from the same area. Associations between the PPGIS place markings with the protection level and biodiversity values were quite low, and for the cultural heritage sites they were altogether missing. Negative preferences were often marked in areas with high numbers of sites rated as pleasant and they overlapped with each other, indicating conflicting preferences. Since most activities are not noticeably related to the protection level or biodiversity values of a site they can be planned so as to protect the biodiversity of the area