Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

QUAESTIONES GEOGRAPHICAE 37(3) • 2018

SELECTED MODERN METHODS AND TOOLS FOR PUBLIC

PARTICIPATION IN URBAN PLANNING – A REVIEW

Muki Haklay1, Piotr Jankowski2,3, Zbigniew Zwoliński3

1
Department of Geography, University College London, United Kingdom
2
Department of Geography, San Diego State University, USA
3
Institute of Geoecology and Geoinformation, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland

Manuscript received: August 17, 2017

Revised version: August 20, 2018

Haklay M., Jankowski P., Zwoliński Zb., 2018. Selected modern methods and tools for public participation in urban
planning – a review. Quaestiones Geographicae 37(3), Bogucki Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Poznań, pp. 127–149, 15 figs, 2
tables.
Abstract: The paper presents a review of contributions to the scientific discussion on modern methods and tools for
public participation in urban planning. This discussion took place in Obrzycko near Poznań, Poland. The meeting was
designed to allow for an ample discussion on the themes of public participatory geographic information systems, par-
ticipatory geographic information systems, volunteered geographic information, citizen science, Geoweb, geographical
information and communication technology, Geo-Citizen participation, geo-questionnaire, geo-discussion, GeoPartici-
pation, Geodesign, Big Data and urban planning. Participants in the discussion were scholars from Austria, Brazil, the
Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the USA. A review of public
participation in urban planning shows new developments in concepts and methods rooted in geography, landscape
architecture, psychology, and sociology, accompanied by progress in geoinformation and communication technologies.
The discussions emphasized that it is extremely important to state the conditions of symmetric cooperation between city
authorities, urban planners and public participation representatives, social organizations, as well as residents.
Key words: Geoweb methods, public participation, urban planning, GIScience, citizen science
Corresponding author: Zbigniew Zwoliński, ZbZw@amu.edu.pl

Introduction growth of holistic approach to public participa-

tion in urban planning exemplified by Geodesign
Researchers and practitioners of urban plan- – a process relying on digital geographic meth-
ning have had a variable interest in developing ods and tools for integrating analysis, evaluation,
and applying methods of public participation design and public involvement in urban and re-
since the 1970s. The interest in methods acceler- gional planning. Despite much interest in partic-
ated in the mid-1990s, accompanied by the devel- ipatory methods rooted in mapping and visual-
opments in public participation geographic in- isation of geographical data, there has not been
formation systems (PPGIS) and participatory GIS many opportunities for scholars working at the
(PGIS). The arrival of Web 2.0 in the 2000s and intersection of participatory methods, communi-
improvements in geographic information tech- cation technologies, and urban planning to meet
nologies resulted in the proliferation of geograph- sharing their research and learning from one
ically related tools and Web services (Geoweb) another.
for individuals and groups. Developments in P/ The aim of this paper is a review of contri-
PGIS, volunteered geographic information (VGI), butions to the scientific discussion on modern
and Geoweb have been recently paralleled by the methods and tools for public participation in

© 2018 Author(s)
This is an open access article distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license

doi: 10.2478/­quageo-2018-0030
ISSN 0137-477X, eISSN 2081-6383
128 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

urban planning. This discussion took place in the way. The MaptionnaireTM software, which is
Raczyński’s Palace in Obrzycko near Poznań, on now maintained and offered by a private com-
22nd and 23rd of June 2017. Piotr Jankowski opened pany, has been used in projects in the Nordic
the meeting explaining the background of the countries, Japan, USA, and in many other places.
discussion panel, explaining a project realised Through the literature, M. Kyttä discovered rel-
at the Adam Mickiewicz University on partici- evant areas which she was unaware of at the be-
patory GIS in urban planning. The meeting was ginning of her work leading to softGIS method-
designed to allow for an ample discussion on the ology – PGIS, PPGIS, Citizen Science, VGI. Her
themes of participatory GIS, citizen science, VGI, work is the nearest to the work of Greg Brown
Geodesign and urban planning. form California Polytechnic State University –
conceptually and structurally there are many
similarities in the methodology used by both of
10 years of public participation GIS them. She sees the person-environment relation-
research and practice in Finland ship and participatory planning as yin and yang
– they contribute to each other. In her research
Marketta Kyttä (Aalto University, Finland) – she has looked at social sustainability, mobility,
delivered the keynote address to start the dis- and environmental memories across different
cussion. She talked about 10 years of public par- groups – from children to elderly. She has also
ticipation GIS research and practice in Finland, investigated human-environment relationship
reflecting on the experience since 2000. Drawing at different scales, various planning stages, and
from her background in environment psychol- in various planning approaches. M. Kyttä and
ogy she has been interested in the human side her group have done over 70 research projects
of GIS technology and in testing the veracity using place-based research approach and over
of claims that tacit and experiential knowledge 150 participatory planning projects.
cannot be integrated into design and practice. In The case studies carried out between 2013–
the 1990s, she felt that environmental psycholo- 2017 show the majority of them were done in
gy was focusing on the person, individual feel- real-world planning situations with much less in
ings and perceptions, but forgetting about the research. The common reality of public participa-
environment. She believed that the interaction tion is that those who show up in open meetings
between the environment and the person was have negative views. There are some people who
generating experiences, and there were only a are the activists passionate about a particular is-
few approaches addressing this relationship sue or values. There needs to be an alternative
– among them Wohlwill (1973), pointing out way of engaging people who are less assertive.
that the environment is not in the head. Her work The Finnish law has mandated participatory
let her to conceive of place-based approach to planning since 2000, but the planning practice
GIS, which she termed softGIS – to underscore has been slow to change; only a handful of people
a behavioural approach to utilizing GIS in or- participate, the deployment of participation tools
der to study human behaviour and experience has been slow to come, the influence of participa-
in the physical environment. The concept of tion on planning decision-making has been min-
softGIS was motivated by thinking about how imal, the focus of those who participate has been
to link perceptions and emotions and the dif- on resisting changes, data collected in the course
ferent ways of understanding space through the of participation has been invisible, and participa-
lens of a physical location. The new methodol- tory processes have been demanding much effort
ogy was conceived in 2003 and the first proto- of the organisers and participants. In Finish case
type was developed in 2005, but the technology studies, a PPGIS in the form of a questionnaire
was weak. The development then progressed to tool has been used as a crowdsourcing tool in ur-
softGIS survey tools, which were more robust ban planning. The pros are data volume and us-
technically, but each survey required a lot of ability fostering collaborative participation. The
effort. The survey tools eventually evolved into cons include the issue of digital exclusion, data
MaptionnaireTM service that has made possible quality, and planning practices regarding the use
since 2015 to use the tools in a more structured of the information.
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 129

Fig. 1. Public participation support system by Kahila-Tani (2016).

Data volume online allows collecting large create explanatory models. For example, an anal-
datasets with little effort and facilitates inclu- ysis performed in Finland in one particular city
siveness – wider groups of people that can be established that as urban density increases the
reached (2,100 participants who provided their perceived environmental quality if it brings the
input on water management plan in Helsinki and everyday services closer. In the suburbs, how-
3,750 people responded to Helsinki Master Plan ever, the closer the services were, the lower was
survey providing 33,000 place marking), the rep- the perceived environmental quality. Why is this
resentativeness looks good across demographic happening in the suburbs is an open question.
classes although it is tempered by the level of ed- The strength of PPGIS is that it allows for explor-
ucation. There is also an ability to customize the ing this and other questions in different spatial
same tool in different languages and with differ- context.
ent interface features, and reach different ethnic Is it possible to foster deep collaboration with
groups, children and young people. Children can PPGIS? The MaptionnaireTM tool allows the crea-
provide good quality data. tion of geographical survey, in which questions
The issue of data quality leading to actiona- are linked with places on a map. Reaching out to
ble (planning) knowledge has been investigated participants can be done by a representative sam-
by Kahila-Tani (2016) who considered how the ple, or more opportunistic approaches such as
relationship between individual participation online advertising, or through a specific event. In
and collective participation impacts the ability a model of public-participation support system
to maintain the diversity of opinion, individu- (Fig. 1) proposed by Kahila-Tani (2016) different
al independence, decentralisation, but also the process stages have different participation poten-
need for data aggregation. The maps allow a new tial with the initiation phase being the essential
type of knowledge in a visible format – such as step for the remainder of participatory process.
the location of a new building and green areas. Is public participation influential in terms of
Moreover, digital maps allow the analysis of impacting decision processes? In the Helsinki
green structures and their relationship to plac- master plan it was possible to see the impact of
es where people live including the use of green suggestions offered by the public as the plan was
structures that can be accounted for by perform- published on a grid, and it was possible to com-
ing simple spatial analysis operations like buff- pare it to the public survey, which showed that
ering and calculating usage densities. This ap- about 25% of the areas that people wanted to pro-
proach allows to overlay an urban structure with tect were threatened by the plan. PPGIS can also
behavioural and experiential factors, and then be integrated into existing systems, which has
link them with health and wellbeing indicators to been demonstrated in the City of Lahti.
130 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

The issues affecting PPGIS include: Examining the values embedded in

–– the use of digital technology: digital divide, the processes and technologies of
technology stress that exists among older par- participatory GIS
ticipants – people over 80 year of age, address-
ing problems in the redesign of application;
–– it is important to see PPGIS in addition to de- Muki Haklay (University College London,
liberative processes that are linked to PPGIS United Kingdom) in his talk started with noting
data – people sometimes pointed out that that a  persistent question about participatory
PPGIS data was wrong as it did not represent methodologies that rely on technologies, such as
their opinion; public participation geographic information sys-
–– there are issues of data quality: representative- tems, is how to integrate values, such as inclusive-
ness, cherry picking, user privacy, manipula- ness of all the people who are impacted by a deci-
tion, and skills required to effectively use the sion, or identifying options that are popular with
data. The data from the Helsinki participatory the majority but acceptable to the minority, within
process, for example, was over-represented technologically focused projects. Moreover, tech-
in the group of 20–40 year old. Moreover, the nologies do not operate by themselves – they are
issue of representativeness is not only about embedded in organisational, political, and social
demography but also about the opportunity; processes that determine how they are used, who
–– there are also ineffective planning practices: can use them, and in what context. Therefore, we
the lack of willingness to allow participation should explore the question of where the values
or influence, challenges in integrating the data reside. Two factors obscure our view. One is the
into practice, and also an issue with surveys; misleading conceptualisation that technologies
namely that they is a continuation of top- are value free, and can be used for good or for
down participation. There is a potential de- bad – which puts all the weight on the process
mand for surveys co-created by planners and and ignores the way, in which any technology
the public and co-analysed data sets. There allows only certain actions to be taken. Another
are no good examples for this and that is a popular view of technology conceptualisation is
future challenge. The danger in not respond- to emphasise its advantages (upside) and ignore
ing to this challenge is PPGIS can be used as a its limitations. If we move beyond these, and oth-
therapeutic participatory device. er common sense views of technologies, we can no-
There are pros (data volume, actionable knowl- tice how process and technology intertwine.
edge, fostering collaborative and influential par- We can, therefore, look at the way the pro-
ticipation) and cons (problems regarding access to cess/technology reinforce and limit each other,
and effective use of digital technology, data qual- and the way that the values are integrated and
ity, ineffective planning practices) of using PPGIS influence them. With this analysis, we can also
as a crowdsourcing tool in urban planning. We consider how technological development can ex-
can think about smart participation using social plicitly include considerations of values, and be
media – Foursquare, Instagram, OpenStreetMap philosophically, politically, and social theory-in-
or Twitter – but we need to think about how to formed (Fig. 2). We need to consider the roles,
make them work. In doing so, we should engage skills, and knowledge of the people that are in-
high-quality GIS knowledge from people who can volved in each part of the process – from commu-
support smart, human-friendly urban planning. nity facilitation to software development.

Fig. 2. M. Haklay’s interpretation of Freenberg’s (1999) opinion on technology.

 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 131

This line of inquiry draws on the experience of informed urban planning. The aim is collecting
developing participatory geographic information information about places and representation
technologies over the past 20 years (Participatory of places. A practical concern in GIS is to make
Rural Appraisal and Participatory Learning explicit the assumption about daily experiences
and Action in 1980s, Public Participation GIS conditioned by place and location. How is place
and Participatory GIS in 1990s, Volunteered/ spatially constructed? Just like people’s behav-
Crowdsourced Geographic Information and iour is often unexpected, so can places be used
Participatory Sensing in 2000s, as well as Citizen in unexpected ways. In an ontological analysis,
Science in 2010s) and will suggest future direc- A. Calafiore tries to represent spatially located
tions for value-based participatory technology social practices. Urban artefacts are interacting
development (Experimenting with maps and with people through social practices. Cities can
Tap&Map). be seen as complex interacting systems of urban
From the start, PPGIS has been both limited artefacts (i.e. buildings, streets and parks) and
and enabled by technological aspects: hardware, spatially situated social practices. She is devel-
software, data, and network speed. The Public oping her concept based on the DOLCE onto-
Participation part means that it is embedded in logical framework. Urban artefacts are subject to
complex and detailed social practices, thus mak- constraints, of which some can be negotiated and
ing PPGIS a socio-technical practice. PPGIS is a some are rigid. A social place is a non-rigid as-
valued-laden practice. Moreover, PPGIS is most- pect of space and can by analysed by employing
ly about expressing the values. Values in PPGIS social roles theory for this aspect. Social practices
are the following: ensuring societal benefits from can be analysed with predicate logic. Depending
technology (Obermeyer 1998), respecting lay, lo- on whether social practices, in which an urban
cal and traditional knowledge (Talen 1999), com- artefact participates, are compliant or not with its
munity, collective views, addressing inequities design specifications, a formal or informal social
(Ghose 2001), maintaining scientific standards, place emerges. If the social practice is compliant
ensuring quality, empowerment (Laituri 2003), with the intended uses given by the very design
supporting wider societal and environmental specifications, then the urban artefact is playing
goals (Sieber 2004), democratisation (Dunn 2007), a formal role. On the contrary, if the social prac-
representation, giving voice (Kwan 2008), and tice is not compliant with the intended uses given
inclusion: passive or assertive (Gottwald et al. by the design specifications, the urban artefact is
2016). playing an informal role.
In summary, M. Haklay concluded that PPGIS
is a socio-technical, value-laden process and
practice. Values in PPGIS should be expressed in G-ICT and creative thinking in the
the social practices and in the technologies that context of urban resilience
are used. Generic technologies can be used, with
some compromises and trade-offs but develop- Aoife Corcoran (co-author Zorica Nedovic-
ing technologies also requires compromises and Budic), (University College Dublin, Ireland)
trade-offs. talked about the role of geographical informa-
tion and communication technology (ICT) in
creative thinking in urban planning, based on
Formal ontologies to support the result of Transitioning to Urban Resilience
participatory urban planning through and Sustainability (TURAS) project2 she worked
the prism of roles theory on with Zorica Nedovic-Budic (2012–2016). She
specifically focused on how ICT tools, includ-
Alessia Calafiore (University of Torino, ing PPGIS, can be used to improve urban resil-
Italy) covered in her talk aspects of FirstLife1 – ience on the example this project and three case
which is about collecting knowledge through studies including: Reusing Dublin3, Meadows
crowdsourcing and then using it in support of
2
turas-cities.org
1
firstlife.org 3
www.reusingdublin.ie
132 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Timeline, and TwitterGI. Examples of urban awareness and collect data that can be used to
resilience improvements include flooding read- lead to a change. Citizens + Data = Change, al-
iness, increase of green infrastructure in inner beit with awareness and joint effort. A.Corcoran
cities or beneficial use of empty spaces. To start is now setting up the “space engagers” social en-
making resilience improvements, cities need to terprise to address some space-related issues in
build a capacity for change. Social-ecological different communities in Ireland. By having people
resilience is the ability to adapt and transform engaged for a short time, geospatial technologies will
as a result of a change. In her research on urban allow people to get involved in coming up with ideas
resilience, A. Corcoran uses mixed-methods and or contribute to wider social goods – she said.
a case-study approach to examine if geospatial
information and communication technologies
(G-ICT) can address cities’ capacity for change Engineering for the local systems of the
and in doing so support the building of urban social participation architecture
resilience and sustainability.
Her three cases looked at empty places in Michał Dzięcielski (Adam Mickiewicz Uni­
Dublin, community history and interventions versity in Poznań, Poland), Maciej Kamiński,
in the Meadows Community in Nottingham, Maciej Szarejko (Urban Cybernetics Centre,
and supporting researchers on urban resilience Wrocław University of Technology, Poland), and
at University of East London. In each case, she Sara Zielińska (Adam Mickiewicz University in
carried out a focus group with different stake- Poznań, Poland) presented a concept of Enterprise
holders and ran different tests (Table 1). In Resource Planning (ERP) tool, that would enable
Dublin, Reusing Dublin provided 400 entries lean management to manage a city, but also pro-
about different locations that can be used, and vide for a participatory element. To manage a city
in Nottingham, a geographic timeline about the in a democratic society, one cannot exercise an au-
history of an estate. In London, it was informa- tocratic form of government, but also one cannot
tion from Twitter that can assist researchers. The give a complete freedom either, as this would lead
analysis of these cases revealed that some of the to an anarchy in a city, hence the need for a golden
technologies helped in creating new ideas, but middle. M. Dzięcielski posited that ERP, original-
A. Corcoran also realised that a co-creation pro- ly conceived for big companies, can be adopted
cess was quite central. The data alone is not enough to give public participation a role in finding solu-
to generate new ideas but requires a more deliberative tions that lead to improving the quality of life.
project – said A. Corcoran. The mutability of tech- The idea of an ERP for a city involves the ability
nology is important – Reusing Dublin, for exam- to improve city foresight and allow the citizens to
ple, is being used by a homeless charity to raise propose their ideas and in turn learn from experts

Table 1. The complementary case study approach involves three case studies in Dublin, Nottingham, and Lon-
don (by A. Corcoran and Z. Nedovic-Budic).
Case study elements Research step Common methodology Analysis method
Stakeholder group      
Resilience principle Pre-design data Focus groups Content analyses
collection
Resilience issue Pre-design data Focus groups Content analyses
collection
G-ICT (geographical information Pre-design data Focus groups Content analyses
and communication technology) collection
Prototyping devel- Programming
opment
Implementation Recruitment of prototype users/
gathering of content
Evaluation Controlled experiment  Statistical analysis
Focus Groups Content analyses
Survey Statistical analysis
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 133

Fig. 3. Workflow for the GeoCitizen Platform (by Fundación CEC and Z-GIS Salzburg).

how they might impact the city. The concept also of work that was done in the Department of
involves adopting ideas from lean management Geoinformatics at University of Salzburg. The
– ensuring that we give citizens the information platform offers tools for transparent participa-
that will support their needs, and from partici- tory community management with a structured
patory budgeting, to allow people to create and process for communication between all stake-
fund their projects. According to the ERP concept holders and assisting decision making processes.
for a city, people submit their ideas to the partic- The functions include smartphone interface, web
ipatory projects support office (PPSO) in the city. platform, and a management dashboard. The
The PPSO can explore, by using an ERP, which methodology involves browsing, collecting ge-
projects would result in unwanted outcomes and ographical information, sharing ideas which are
detract from the quality of life, and which project geotagged, then discussing spatial content, rating
would benefit the quality of life. Using ERP and proposals, and monitoring implementation (Fig.
lean management, the project support office can 3). The platform has been used, among others, in
help in selecting citizen ideas that are beneficial the town of Michaelnbach in Upper Austria, the
for the quality of life in the city. Ecuadorian Amazon, San Vicente in Colombia,
and in Barrio Bonito (south of Quito) in Colombia.
The platform design allows to monitor, the pro-
The GeoCitizen participation cess progress (Fig. 4) and promotes the inclusion
framework of as many stakeholders as relevant to the process.

Thomas Blaschke and Karl Atzmanstorfer

(University of Salzburg, Austria) presented Geo-discussion
the GeoCitizen Platform4 – based on 20 years
Dariusz Walczak (Recoded, Poznań, Poland)
4
geocitizen.org and Marek Młodkowski (Adam Mickiewicz
134 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Fig. 4. Organisational design of the GeoCitizen Platform (by T. Blaschke and K. Atzmanstorfer).

Uni­versity in Poznań, Poland) presented an ap- of geo-discussion can see the threads and con-
plication of geo-discussion method and tool as tent of comments and can also hide some (e.g.,
a result of the project5 about supporting public offensive) comments. The process of setting up
participation in urban planning through GIS the geo-discussion tool for a specific application
(Bąkowska et al. 2016, Czepkiewicz et al. 2016, is simple and reduced to responding to short
Jankowski et al. 2016, 2017 a, b, 2018). They prompts that can open specific functions facilitat-
demonstrated a case study in a suburban vil- ing a discussion such as map and text interface.
lage of Rokietnica near Poznań (Fig. 5) involv- The system design includes many considerations
ing a discussion about a local urban develop- on how to address the specific aspects of discus-
ment plan. The geo-discussion could be accessed sions in a way that produces actionable informa-
through a web browser on a laptop and on a mo- tion for planners.
bile phone. The geo-discussion attracted 65 active
participants (52% of returning participants to dis-
cussion) resulting in 131 discussion threads and Geodesign
575 likes and dislikes to discussion threads. The
participants were mostly younger; 51% of partici- Michele Campagna and Chiara Cocco (Uni­
pants came from the age group 25–34. The Google versity of Cagliari, Italy) showed their Geodesign
analytics data revealed that the participants framework application from the city of Cagliari
mostly used the desktop version of geo-discus- in Sardinia. The origins of Geodesign framework
sion application. Each thread of the discussion lie in the work of Carl Steinitz from Harvard
had a unique URL and could be used to direct University and Hrishikesh Ballal from the
someone to a specific comment, see how many Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at
participants responded to a particular comment, University College London. There are many plan-
when, and what they wrote. The administrator ning styles with different outcomes and methodol-
ogies. In the plan design process there is a need for

5
Geoportal supporting public participation in spatial plan-
planners and participants from the public to come
ning financed by the National Research and Develop- together and deal with information, hence there
ment Center (contract number PBS3/A9/39/2015). is a need for simple interfaces. The Geodesign
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 135

Fig. 5. Comments on draft plan of land use of the Rokietnica centre (by D. Walczak and M. Młodkowski).

framework is the core of Steinitz’s model of A big data dashboard architecture for
Geodesign (Steinitz 2012). The framework starts computable intelligent city policy
with representation models and process models,
and then moves on to employ evaluation models. Peter Nijkamp (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
There is a cycle of data-information-knowledge in Netherlands; Adam Mickiewicz University in
the assessment phase and the intervention stage Poznań, Poland) (in collaboration with Karima
– the stages comprising Geodesign workflow. Kourtit) noted that the way we talk about policy
Geodesign Hub6 is a web application that supports needs to differentiate between goals and imple-
Geodesign participatory process. The application mentations. From an early stage in his studies, he
is easy to use by lay participants and enables to learned that when people come with ideas, there
quickly produce suitability maps that are coloured can be a whole list of goals for policy, and the
in a consistent way and the input data can be en- task of the scientists is to consider how to imple-
tered either by experts and/or by lay participants. ment it. In a linear system, the number of goals
New ideas involving changes to the existing land will be exactly the number of instruments which
configuration can be sketched on diagrams in the is an assumption of how to implement policy. In
form of simplified land use maps. People can copy the Netherlands, a consultation about sustaina-
diagrams contributed by other participants and ble development led to over 65 goals but without
adjust them. Diagrams can be created by experts any thought of implementation, and therefore
and by lay participants. The participants can mark the plan failed. Dreams have to be confronted
the diagrams that they especially like. Then it is with reality – the human capabilities to look at
possible to create a synthesis. The participants can the multiplicity of goals is limited (e.g. the mag-
also check and see the cost impacts of different ical number of 7) – beyond 7 it is not possible to
land use changes. The hub is supporting the pro- achieve goals. In a scientific system, you need to
cess of calculating costs, comparing options and minimise things to lead to very few critical fac-
assessing impacts. tors. Simon (1976) published a paper about the
economics of complexity over 30 years ago, in
6
www.geodesignhub.com which he used the example of two watch repair
136 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Fig. 6. P. Nijkmap’s view on a smart, interactive navigation tool based on a balanced trade-off of Society,
Environment and Economy.

people with one looking at all the details of the have appeared and the importance of the ques-
system and therefore ultimately failing, and the tion of how to organise and manage them has in-
other who decomposes the system to sub-sys- creased. Batty (2013) pointed out that a city is not
tems and that way manages to complete the task just a source of planning and activities, but also
in a more efficient way. The number of aspects data. Are we going to find patterns in the data, or
in a planning system is limited, and there can are we aiming to have a theory first? P. Nijkamp
be a highly complex system that needs to be de- moved from just looking at the data, back to ex-
composed to few core sub-systems (e.g. car dash- amining the theory and posited that we need an
board as a demonstration). The view that Simon evidence-based approach. Thinking from the po-
is offering is a new urban world, in which we sition of theory about rational planning, one has
need to notice all the challenges in an urban envi- to consider first the mission of planning, and then
ronment – connected city, climate adaptation etc. take that into consideration methodological and
There have been many discussions about operational aspects. The methodology involves
smart cities over the past decade. We need to things like information cascade or hierarchical
think what we mean by that – the European fo- filters. The operational side is computable and
cus has been on resources and the quality of life. numerical. A dashboard, which exemplifies the
The core element of any discussion on the idea operational side of planning, is a health check for
of smart city is about the use of information and a city or a region. The dashboard is an advisory
communication technology (ICT). The literature and not a command and control system. The op-
on the subject mixes the input side with the out- erational part of the city of Amsterdam involves
put side. Smart Cities require decomposition looking at job creation, regional and internation-
– economy, people, governance, mobility etc. al export position, innovation and entrepreneur-
Naturally, there are different rankings for qual- ship, and geographic concentration. The idea is
ity of life, green city, etc., – there are all sorts of to compare Amsterdam to other cities in space
indicators but these are not very helpful. Global (spatial indicators) and across time. In urban sys-
City Power Index, developed in Japan, is prob- tems, there are sub-systems and sub-sub-systems
ably the best example. As the discussion about – focusing on each goal, but there is also an over-
the smart city evolved, the Big Data challenges all goal. The outcomes of the dashboard need to
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 137

be interpreted within the wider ecological, so-

cial, and economic perspectives of the city (Fig.
6) – this requires an expertise in interpretation.
Smart City is not only about the digital power
since putting it in the hand of untrained end us-
ers will lead to a disaster. The system is assuming
a stability in the planning of the goals and having
long-term goals.
Fig. 7. Age distribution of respondents in Olomouc
(by J. Pánek).
Mapping web-application for digital
participation in urban planning information and also to record participant demo-
graphic data. In Olomouc public participation ap-
Jiří Pánek (Palacký University Olomouc, Czech plication, there were 2,117 respondents – with 481
Republic) demonstrated a system that is being de- using paper mapping interface and 1,636 access-
veloped in Olomouc in the Czech Republic and ing web interface. The questionnaire focused on
allows a subjective layer of emotional mapping of 6 spatial questions (In what public space do you
the city on top of thematic mapping. He uses the feel well? Where are public spaces that are unat-
concept from Perkins (2009) about the emotional tractive/ugly and should be improved? Where
understanding of space and place. He also bor- do you feel unsafe? Which areas could be im-
rows the idea from Griffin and McQuoid (2012) proved regarding public transport? Which areas
about noticing maps of emotions, maps to collect could be improved regarding walkability? Which
emotional data, and finally emotions about using areas should be developed in the future?) The re-
maps. Another consideration involves biometric spondents contributed 25,760 points/lines/poly-
measurements – e.g. BioMapping (Bergner et al. gons with 4,801 comments. The age distribution
2011), extraction of user-generated content but of participants was heavily skewed towards the
also surveys. While it is useful to understand that younger age groups (Fig. 7), with half of partic-
emotional maps can be relevant, he is also sug- ipants who were university students and 45%
gesting the concept of GeoParticipation7 (Pánek with a university degree. The results allowed to
et al. 2014). This can be seen as an element of identify 5–10 hot-spots to analyse further: the city
PPGIS, but it is also part of Participatory Planning needed simplified location data that they could
Support System (PPSS). The approach depends use illuminated by participant comments. Some
on crowdsourcing, and has been deployed across aspects of the analysis showed the focus of people
the Czech Republic through a network of small on their local area, marking places where they felt
towns promoting sustainability and working happy and where improvements were needed.
with over 40 cities. J. Pánek covered in his talk The lessons from this and other applications are
the concept of learning from failure. Using an an- fourfold. Points are sufficient for most of the case
alogue approach (just papers and pen) did work studies. Critical mass is really crucial – thousands
in terms of expressiveness but it was difficult to of participants are important. Active engagement
map it with pencil only. Also going only digital, with local authorities is a must: without it there
with just allowing people to draw point, line, is no point in organizing participatory planning.
or polygon was not satisfactory either. This let Analysis of participant comments can result in
J.  Pánek to try to use only points, because heat- further insights.
maps can produce wrong information about the
city. He decided to collect points that are associ-
ated with a person, his/her background and in- Geo-questionnaire – a tool to support
terest. He combined paper and digital maps, and the process of social participation
for the paper maps he used pins. This approach
allowed to record details about who collected the Bogna Kietlińska (University of Warsaw,
Poland) is a sociologist and art historian who col-
7
www.pocitovemapy.cz laborates with geographers and cartographers.
138 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

In her paper presentation, co-authored with mark things that they liked and disliked and
Robert Olszewski and Agnieszka Turek also respond to open questions. Respondents
(Warsaw University of Technology, Poland) she younger than 25 liked the street, respondents be-
presented the results of geo-questionnaire an- tween 25–50 years had mixed opinion, and older
swered by 154 respondents and concerning the people (>51) did not like the changes at all (Fig.
public perception of a recently revitalized street 8). The limitations of the questionnaire are the
(Tumska street) in the city of Płock. Płock is an issue of internet access and web use skills high-
old city, with the population of 126,000 and a lighting the issue of representativeness. There is
university city with a lot of young people. The also an issue of not considering human body in
biggest problem on the Tumska street, which is space. This perspective on who participates and
the city promenade, is that there are many obsta- in what way, draws from the phenomenology
cles that make the street difficult to navigate. It of perception, urban sociology and sensuous
is mostly shopping and services street and there geography supported by thematic cartography.
are social problems: city-owned and rent-subsi- Hence, there is a need to contextualize the em-
dized flats, homelessness, and the lack of trust bodiment of experience and meaning in the real-
in the city’s intention to revitalize the area. In ities of urban space. Emplacement creates certain
Poland many municipalities do not have spatial association and understanding. One can think of
plans and there is little trust in the effectiveness ethnographic methods (walks, observations, col-
of local governments. In the preparation for the lecting oral histories, etc.), design thinking with
geo-questionnaire project, B. Kietlińska and her prototyping, and gamification (virtual and aug-
co-authors looked at open geoinformation, vol- mented reality, storytelling) as ways of captur-
unteered geography information (VGI), spatial ing human experiences contextualized by urban
data mining, text mining and engaged multidis- spaces. Of particular interest to B. Kietlińska and
ciplinary concepts cutting through science, art, her colleagues is gamification that offers possi-
and business. The questionnaire has provided an bilities of widening participation and deepening
opportunity for respondents , to geolocate their participant involvement. Another interesting
answers making them less abstract and more method is an agent-based model of a city. Agent-
suitable for participation in spatial planning based simulation models combined with a gam-
(open geoinformation society). People could ification approach can open new possibilities at
addressing important questions about cities and
engaging city residents at a deeper, more sus-
tainable, and meaningful level.

The Geo-Citizen participation

framework: 15 years research, 3 years
implementation – now serving societies
worldwide

Thomas Blaschke and Karl Atzmanstorfer

(University of Salzburg, Austria) reported on the
GeoCitizen framework, which is now well es-
tablished and has been applied as a commercial
service in selected countries of South America,
Africa, and in Europe, particularly in small
towns. The framework has also been applied to
projects focused on assessing quality of life and
Fig. 8. Age and gender structure of respondents well-being, relative to personal expectations and
in geo-questionnaire on Tumska Street in Płock experiences, and carried out in collaborating with
(by B. Kietlińska et al.). environmental psychologist.
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 139

K.  Atzmanstorfer reported on his work that the neighbourhood scale, focus on ideas instead
is linked to Domingo Anjuasg of the Shuar of complaints, keep the tool simple but struc-
Nation from the Ecuadorian Amazon, and re- tured, use local knowledge.
ceived an award in the Amazon GIS initiative
that was noted in 2016 ESRI user international
conference in San Diego. The work on the pro- Interoperability and visualisation
ject was is done with Richard Resl (GEOcentro as a support for mental maps to face
UNIGIS, Universidad San Francisco de Quito). differences in scale in Brazilian
The technology of GIS has been used to “level Geodesign processes
the playing field” and aid the native people in
the competition with corporations over the right
to use natural resources in an area. Richard was Ana Clara Moura (Federal University of Minas
asked, 25 years ago, to teach the Shuar on how to Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil), Tiago Marino
create maps. Domingo and the Shuar also want- (Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro,
ed to communicate their life plans to the world. Brazil), Hrishikesh Ballal (Geodesign Hub Pvt
The pilot project of the GeoCitizen was to allow Ltd, Ireland), Suellen Ribeiro (Federal University
the Shuar people to discuss how they wanted to of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) and
use their territory and how it should be used by Silvio Motta (Pontifical Catholic University of
people. This led to other cases in a more urban Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) co-au-
environment such as participatory infrastructure thored a paper on Geodesign in Pampulha, Brazil.
planning for Quito. That worked was followed They used the framework of Geodesign (Fig. 9)
by usability studies with marginalised commu- proposed by Steinitz (2012). They followed the
nities in Cali, Colombia, working with black process through different models and iterated
communities, people with little or no formal through the process 3 times – first finding the
education, and asking them to carry out some basic information and running the model twice
tasks. Mapping tasks turned out to be difficult to ensure that it was done correctly. They started
but other reporting tasks familiar from the use of with representation models in the first iteration.
social media turned out to be easy. One conclu- Significant work was required to create data for
sion from these projects is that spatial literacy is various landscape variables, such as vegetation.
a major obstacle. K.  Atzmanstorfer and his col- They classified maps to represent vulnerability
leagues are also considering serious games as a and attractiveness and included in the process
way to help people understand spatial informa- stakeholders representing developers, business,
tion. An anecdote from their experience is that and environmental NGOs. The first iteration did
when GeoCitizen researchers carried out their not yield useful results. In the second iteration,
work in the indigenous community, people who an advertisement on YouTube was dedicated to
were aiming to rob them of their tablets turned recruiting relevant people with local knowledge.
into respondents once they understood what In the third iteration, A.C. Moura and her team
these tools were for. Interestingly enough, they used printed maps since just using computers
brought the methodology honed during appli- alone was not working. As soon as the partici-
cations in South America back to Austria and pants went to the computers, they left the paper,
have been using it in small villages in Austria. but this took 40 minutes of working with paper
The basic concept is from local to multiple case first. The process included a lot of talking about
studies. There is also an organisational design the participants discussing variables, maps, and
(see Fig. 4) that emphasizes having a local lead- process steps. In the end, the participants want-
er and facilitators. Applications of GeoCitizen ed just to consider three variables in modelling
framework require multiple skills: facilitators, change to land use organization in Pampulha.
people who are helping in understanding the The main contribution of the experiment was
GIS data, those who have skills in working with showing that the Geodesign workflow can be
social media, and those who can train partic- used to build different futures for the place, to
ipants and keep them motivated. The lessons arrive at more specific question that will be put
from the framework applications are: consider out for a discussion, but also in educating people
140 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Fig. 9. Methodological framework of Geodesign for Pampulha in Brazil. The whole case study was developed
in three iterations of Geodesign method (by A.C. Moura et al.).

about the implications of their choices. People The case they discussed was about running a
who participated understood things that they Geodesign case of Cagliari metro area in Sardinia.
did not understand before. The case involved a municipal plan and an at-
tempt to collaborate with other nearby municipal-
ities (17 of them), which did not have the culture
Collaboration in planning: the of participation. M.  Campagna and Ch.  Cocco
Geodesign approach organized and led a Geodesign workshop over 2
days. The workshop goal was to create a land use
Michele Campagna and Chiara Cocco (Uni­ change forecast for 20 years and consider 10 dif-
versity of Cagliari, Italy) presented software ferent urban systems. They started from an anal-
for a new planning support system. Following ysis of regulations and plans that allowed them
Arnstein’s ladder (1969), other models of pub- to select those systems that would be the study
lic participation in planning started to emerge focus. The systems were split into aspects in need
specifically including information technolo- of protection (e.g. ecology) and development (e.g.
gy (Kingston 1998, Carver 2001). In particular smart industries). The aspects were considered
Kingston’s model (1998) focused participation as system variables in estimating system impacts
on interests and agendas, and risk assessment including the cost of change in the current land
in making a decision. In public participation we use configuration affecting urban systems. The
need to think about groups including partici- workshop gave training to about 30 people from
pants, communities, and NGOs. In participatory the university but also professionals from across
planning the planner’s role has changed from ex- the area – they played the roles of different stake-
pert only to both expert and public participation holders. The participants were asked to work as
coordinator. expert groups on each of 10 systems; each group
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 141

was assigned to one system. Following the work relying on the work by Bishr (1998) that stressed
on individual systems the participants created a the need for interoperability with other systems
map-based synthesis of proposed land use chang- enabling the creation of different visualisations.
es and measured some of the impacts of proposed Different forms of visualization allowed new
changes. M. Campagna and Ch. Cocco also ana- ways of understanding the designs. By having a
lysed the compatibility between groups and start- 3D representation people could use maps better
ed negotiations and evaluating different models. and deal with scale problems. A.C.  Moura and
They carried out two syntheses, the final discus- her co-authors concluded that the first iteration
sion revealed some tensions, however, it ended process presented a general alternative future
with an agreed model. Planners, public admin- scenario and the third iteration, that had a more
istration, stakeholder and community members specific set of key questions, achieved more de-
demonstrated that they were able to provide in- tailed and accurate results. Geodesign is about al-
put in different stages of the process. ternative futures, and we need to share decisions
and enable communication between people and
between machines. We need to deal with reality,
Geodesign in Pampulha cultural and mental maps and digital representation.
heritage urban area: visualization
tools to orchestrate urban growth and
dynamic transformations FirstLife – A geo-social network to
support participation in urban design

Ana Clara Moura, Camila M. Zyngier, Rogé­ Alessia Calafiore and Lucia Lupi (University
rio Palhares and Flávio Carsalade (Federal Uni­ of Torino, Italy) present FirstLife8 – a geo-social
versity of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil) network to support participation in urban design
presentation focused on a place in the state of and city planning. It is about collecting georefer-
Minas Gerais, Brazil where there is a historical enced systems – places, groups, news and events
place – cultural heritage in Quadrilatero Ferrifero. and thinking about relationships among them on
It is an important place with urban growth, min- a temporal scale. The map allows filtering by time
ing, cultural heritage and the beginning of the or by groups (Fig. 11). There are multiple points
Brazilian culture. They were influenced by Steinitz of view – a school can be viewed from a student,
(2012) works. They created representation mod- parent, teacher perspective. Although they have
els and needed to produce data over two months. started with points of interest, A.  Calafiore and
This would allow them to move to process mod- L.  Lupi are now dealing with building blocks
els and evaluation model (Fig. 10). To represent of the base-map – such as selecting the whole
the evaluation of existing land use structure on building and trying to deal with the geometry
maps they used three levels of green for accept- according to the scale. The platform is address-
able, yellow for not appropriate, and red for un- ing different aspects and objectives: from issues
acceptable. They have done that with the help such as regeneration to new design. In that re-
of 10 researchers from the Federal University of spect, they collect data to document projects and
Minas Gerais. For the Geodesign workshop they initiatives and to follow-up to ensure continuity.
had 6 teams including people from communities, A. Calafiore and L. Lupi started the project with
NGOs, who constituted groups that focused on 6 municipalities, 30 schools, 60 teachers and 70
change and conservation. The groups discussed classes. The project started with planning activ-
different options for land use change, however, ities, introduced the guidelines for mapping ac-
the participants were not linking the reality with tivities and moved to proposals about sites for
the maps. It became evident that people did not regeneration. Workshops were carried out with
understand where they situated the map dia- different groups including students and teachers
grams and what was their meaning. To address who had to be trained in the use of the platform.
that, A.C.  Moura and her team realized that During the workshops the participants selected
they needed to link the reality with digital rep-
resentation and decided to use 3D visualisation 8
firstlife.org
142 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Fig. 10. The composition of three Geodesign iterations in the case study of Pampulha. Each iteration involves
working with representation, process, and evaluation models resulting in the production of data, information,
and knowledge, respectively. Following the account of the existing conditions, the proposal stage begins,
which is related to change, impact and decision models that also produce data, information and knowledge,
respectively (by A.C. Moura et al.).
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 143

Fig. 11. Screenshot of Web-based application FirstLife (firstlife.org).

potential locations for regeneration. There were regional level. There is a continued interest in
also focus group meetings to ensure that offline air quality – in internet queries one can see many
interactions were recorded and shared on the questions about NOx. However, some specialised
system. The follow up is to select proposals for terms are less searched online by the public: e.g.,
recommendations on regeneration. PM10 became a search term only in 2017, and oth-
er terms are not searched at all. Poznań has only 4
monitoring stations with only 2 running contin-
Social participation in determining air uous monitoring – people want to see warnings
quality in agglomerations being communicated to them. From the political
point of view, the protection of the environment
Beata Jasiewicz, Jarosław Jasiewicz, Wal­ is centralised at the Ministry of Environmental
demar Ratajczak, Alfred Stach (Adam Mickie­ Protection with state councils on nature conser-
wicz University in Poznań, Poland) and vation and another one on environment protec-
Maciej Stro­iński (Poznań Supercomputing and tion (experts in different areas). At the provincial
Networking Centre, Poland) discussed a collabo- level, the governor (Voivode) and the provincial
ration between chemistry, geosciences and com- inspector for environmental protection overlap
puter science. The discussed case, located in the with the oversight carried out by the national
City of Poznań, concerned urban air quality. Air level authorities. At the provincial level, there are
quality is a growing problem in Poland, i.e.,. in different mechanisms: public consultations, link-
Cracow, Poznań, Wrocław and other places. It is ing with NGOs, public independent initiatives,
becoming an important political issue. There are and of course citizen independent actions and
also penalties for municipalities that are ignoring protest, but also independent citizens budgets.
smog. There were 300 alarms of exceeding the At the city level there are the city council and the
limits of PM10,which is amongst the highest in mayor who have environment protection respon-
Europe. There is a high concentration of PM10/ sibilities. The regional council also has environ-
PM2.5 and NO2 across the city with 18 exceedanc- mental responsibilities funded by the provincial
es a year. The situation is slightly better on the fund for environmental protection. Offering new
side of SO2. There are many issues that affect the ideas requires negotiating with lots of organi-
legal efficiency of addressing air quality at the sation. J.  Jasiewicz and others tried to address
144 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Fig. 12. Public participation in urban planning in Poland and Web-based applications of geo-questionnaire and
geo-discussion (by E. Bąkowska et al.).
the problem of air pollution through Public Applications of Geoweb Methods in
Independent initiative at the city level – with the Urban Planning on the Examples of
mayor and city council. To do that, they looked at Selected Polish Cities
the concept of smart and digital city and consid-
ered sensors of air quality. They also considered
forecasting of the conditions through emission Edyta Bąkowska, Marek Młodkowski and Łu-
data, topographical data and weather data. They kasz Mikuła (Adam Mickiewicz University in
started doing simulations of pollutants disper- Poznań, Poland) presented a project aimed to
sion in the city and also considered modelling support public participation in urban planning9.
air movement in the street. They are now con- The authors noted the need for collecting spatial
sidering applications and services that will help
people plan where they should go for outdoor 9
Geoportal supporting public participation in spatial plan-
activities. They examined a similar system that ning financed by the National Research and Develop-
involved communities in Krakow, Wrocław, and ment Center (contract number PBS3/A9/39/2015),
also looked at other systems. geoplan.amu.edu.pl.
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 145

planning proposal at the beginning of the plan-

ning process, and collecting opinions in the draft
stage of the plan (Fig. 12). This includes a public
presentation of the plan, public discussion, and
formal motions for alterations.
The authors reported on developing a
geo-questionnaire tool to collect proposals, and
a geo-discussion tool to collect opinions and fa-
cilitate on-line public discussion (Bąkowska et
al. 2016, Czepkiewicz et al. 2016, Jankowski et al.
2016, 2017 a, b, 2018). As part of applied research
project, they have done 10 public consultation
processes – 6 with geo-questionnaire, and 4 that Fig. 13. Structured process of decision-making in
included both tools. These projects attracted 7500 urban planning (by E. Bąkowska et al.).
active participants and further 97 participants
in 2 geo-discussions. The cases were located in centre. The authors have used a structured par-
the Poznań and Łódź agglomerations. The cases ticipation process (Fig. 13) and carried out the
included land use plans, urban design and ur- questionnaire in December 2015 followed by the
ban renewal, transportation plans, maps of lo- geo-discussion in May/June 2017. The process
cal needs, and quality of life diagnosis. The case has been a long one, in terms of transferring land-
study areas ranged from 1 ha to 200,000 ha. In a use plan to the system. The geo-questionnaire had
sub-urban village of Rokietnica they had an in- 435 respondents, about 3.3% of the resident in the
teresting case – a fast growing area, doubling in village with over-representation in the 25–45 age
population over 10 years. The case study focused group. In the geo-discussion, 65 people partici-
on an abandoned 16 ha site located in the village pated creating 131 discussion threads, with 51%

Fig. 14. Some results of geo-questionnaire and their influence on the formation of draft land use plan
(by E. Bąkowska et al.).
146 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

Table 2. Proposed dimensions of PPGIS design (by M. Czepkiewicz et al.).

Technology
Socio-institutional context Participants
Design considerations for PPGIS GIS
of participation process Who is participating?
tools
Rules and norms Knowledge available to participants Direction of communication
Planning approach Selection criteria Type of interactions
Situation in the planning process Group size between participants
Objectives Recruitment Types of contributions
Conveners and recipients Input format
Subject Geographic information aids
Resources
System of tools and communication
channels

participants in the 25–34 age group. The result is constraints of planner-centred process restrict-
that views from the geo-questionnaire have in- ing public access to information. M. Czepkiewicz
fluenced the planning, but the planners decided and his co-authors see the need to consider the
to locate multi-family buildings in places where diagnosis of current situation as the preliminary
the participants suggested single family houses step for participatory planning. They identified
(Fig. 14). Strong opinions about the suggested the tools (Fig. 15) that can match knowledge and
density were expressed in the geo-discussion flow of knowledge between participants, e.g.,
(Fig. 5). This case study obviated the need for le-
gal regulations on the use of Geoweb tools such
as geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion. It also
showed the need for better integration of infor-
mation obtained from participatory processes in
planning practice.

An Integrated Approach to Public

Participation in Urban Planning with
Geoweb Methods
Michał Czepkiewicz (Adam Mickiewicz Uni­
versity in Poznań, Poland; University of Iceland,
Reykjavik, Iceland), Piotr Jankowski (San
Diego State University, San Diego, USA; Adam
Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland) and
Cezary Brudka (Poznań University of Economics,
Poland) explored the ability to think about urban
planning phases and supporting the designers
in what they need to integrate the tools into the
process of urban planning. They developed a dia-
gram representing constructs, aspects, premises,
and relations between the constructs compris-
ing Enhanced Adaptive Structuration Theory 2
(EAST2) framework (Jankowski 2011). They see
the socio-institutional context of the participa-
tory process, considering the participants and the
technology, as indispensable for design consider-
ation. They proposed several dimensions (Table Fig. 15. Framework for an integrated approach
2) using Kahila-Tani’s (2016) ideas of moving to public participation in urban planning
towards more collaborative planning under the (by M. Czepkiewicz et al.).
 Selected Modern Methods and Tools for Public Participation in Urban Planning – a review 147

geo-questionnaire that provides information Conclusions

from participant to the convener, but does not
support communication between participants. In summary, the meeting highlighted seven
They also pay attention to the linkage and trans- major points that can be relevant to the wider
fer of information and posit a question of whether area of participatory approaches in geography
is it just about informing or achieving shared un- that are utilising ICT.
derstating? Geo-questionnaires provide one-way First, understanding ICT use by people be-
communication but do not support a two-way longing to different groups – concern about dig-
information sharing. This works in some public ital exclusion and how different people have
participation cases, but not in those that require access and ability to use participatory systems.
moving away from rational planning practic- There is an increasing engagement with tech-
es towards communicative and evidence-based nology, but because of the persistence of the age
planning. distribution of those who participate we seem to
have an issue with people at an older age, and
therefore need to have strategies for inclusion.
Volunteered Geographic Information Another opinion pointed about collaboration be-
for planning: the case for „emergent” tween millennials and older people as one way
cycle lanes in cities to address this. That said, the ability of older
groups to acquire information and learn is lower
Antonello Romano and Stefano Picascia (Uni­ than that of younger people. This speaks to the
versity of Siena, Italy) looked at ways of integrat- need to consider how artificial intelligence (AI)
ing VGI into the planning process. They were assistance can be used to improve participation
looking at VGI assuming wisdom of the crowds, among older groups. We need to be aware of the
and specifically focused on Strava data coming ever-changing technology need to consider how
from bicycle users. The data are sold for profit – a it may be narrowed with future technology.
wealth of data that can be useful. They explored Second, we need to consider the experiences
the options of using this data to help with plan- concerning to legal regulations in the context of
ning of cycle routes – identifying routes where participation: in urban planning, there are regu-
a high number of trips are taken. Arguably the lations in Italy that open the option but do not
network of bike paths is emerging from multiple mandate it. One needs to be aware of implica-
cyclists and there is an opportunity to find out tions for different bodies even within the same
why these routes emerge. To understand the data state. In Ireland, data protection and ownership
there is a need to use the infrastructure data such are coming as a major concern for organisations
as bicycle path network combined with topogra- about what is collected and where. In Brazil, there
phy, information about incidents and accidents is a law that requires participation in planning,
and other bits of information, in order to be able but what type of participation and which level of
to explain the cycling pattern. Trips taken on the participation – it is not made explicit. In the USA,
cycling network and those that are outside the there is a federal system that allows independent
network help to reveal the usability of the current bodies to collaborate – counties do have a lot of
cycling network including its bottlenecks such as power, and cities do their own planning. Based
roundabouts and places where the cycling net- on the ideas of federalism they do things their
work does not continue. Some observations from own way. Some cities are more participatory due
Rome do not match the data and there are ques- to their culture, while other are not trying to en-
tions if we should use Strava data. There are data gage people. Poland has experienced growth in
problems including: data quality and accuracy, soft informal planning – pre-planning processes
demographic profile, price, ethics. Elderly cy- that open opportunities for planning.
clists do not use mobile phone applications such Third, we need to consider what are necessary
as Strava. There is an issue of data that is valuable conditions for cooperation between city planners
for the society, but due to its proprietary nature and public participation representatives? In Italy
such data locked by the company and inaccessi- it is impacted by the wider atmosphere, with
ble to the public. planners being limited by the current politics
148 Muki Haklay, Piotr Jankowski, Zbigniew Zwoliński

and guidance. In the Polish system, the city plan- whether there is is more scope for participation
ners are also limited within their focus and remit and if the participatory effort will be treated seri-
– they are not asked to do public participation. ously or not.
Other experiences in Poland point that planners
have specific needs for information, which re- Acknowledgments
quire following a top-down process to allow for
public participation. There is a need for a process The review and discussion described in this
that allows for symmetric information exchange. paper were conducted as part of the project
In Brazil, the planners act as the designers of the Geoportal supporting public participation in urban
city and they somewhat resist to be the decoder planning financed by the National Research and
of collective values. There are also restrictions in Development Center (contract number PBS3/
terms of the role and what is expected from the A9/39/2015).
private or the public planner. For example, if the
private planner office does not want to expose
the information to the public, the public plan- References
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