by Jonathan Cohen, FAIA

Outline of a Grant Proposal
3 November 1997

Today, important land use planning and community design decisions must be made with the participation of community residents. Yet such decisions are frequently made in the context of emotional confrontation between the sponsors of development proposals and their opponents, with public officials caught haplessly in the middle. Worse, such confrontations are often fueled by misinformation and misunderstanding on both sides. Public participation is hampered by inadequate access to information about proposed projects. And uncertainty about public reaction to development proposals creates a major element of risk for their sponsors, who must invest time and money without knowing if their proposals will be approved.

This demonstration website aims to showcase the Internet as a participatory medium and a powerful tool for enabling community-based design. We'll use the multimedia capabilities of the Web to make complex visual and spatial concepts accessible to a broad public. And we'll use the Web's interactive features to create a place for focussed discussion and information exchange about a specific development site.

The pilot project we have chosen is the redevelopment of Treasure Island, a decommissioned naval base in San Francisco Bay, halfway between Oakland and San Francisco. This is a highly visible site, and its redevelopment will have impacts throughout the Bay Area. There are already a number of proposals and there will surely be a great deal of controversy.

The goals of this project are:

1. To increase effective public participation in the design of a major redevelopment proposal.

2. To provide enhanced information to the public about the proposal: its' constraints and objectives, the context, the proposed solutions, as well as the process that will be used to make decisions.

3. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the WWW at broadening and extending the reach of public participation in community design, and to encourage its use in other communities.

4. The expected outcome is that better planning and design choices can be made because an informed public participated meaningfully in the process and now has a stake in the outcome.

The content of the website will include:

1. Information about the site and surroundings: the physical and historical context, explained with maps, aerial photos, GIS information, QuickTime VR panoramas, historical drawings and photos.

2. The issues that the proposed development raises for the community:

• The need for development: e.g. affordable housing, expanded tax base, recreation.
• Economic impacts and opportunities
• Transportation impacts
• Creating a sense of place

3. The development proposals: using computer models, CAD information, photomontage, VRML and other techniques of architectural representation, we'll let participants understand and experience the development options as accurately as possible.

4. Information about the decision-making process and ways to participate in it: meeting schedules, hotlinks to planning officials, threaded discussion groups, fill-out comment forms.

Organization and Personnel:

The sponsoring organization will be The San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association. (SPUR) is a non-profit, member supported public policy "think tank". SPUR researches, analyzes and promotes public policy that it feels will enhance the City's livability while also promoting the City's economic vitality. With 1200 individual and 200 business members, a diverse sixty member Board of Directors, and eleven member staffed committees and task forces, SPUR is the only citizen/ business coalition addressing public policy in San Francisco today.

Jonathan W. Cohen, FAIA will be the project director. Mr. Cohen is an architect and planner with over 20 years of experience. His firm, Jonathan Cohen and Associates has won several major design awards, including a national Urban Design Citation from the American Institute of Architects, a AIA/San Francisco Honor Award, and an Urban Land Institute award. During the past 2 years Mr. Cohen has lectured nationally to architects and planners about the potential of the Internet for research, project management, and participatory design. His program, "Expanding Your Practice with the Internet", sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and Apple Computer, Inc., has been presented over 60 times in more than a dozen US cities.

Bruce A. Race, FAIA, AICP, is an urban designer with a national reputation in public participation techniques. His role will be to apply this expertise to the expanded communications potential of the Web. Mr. Race is a Vice President of SPUR, and a board member of AIA/San Francisco and the Union Square Business Improvement District.

Additional participants will include:

• The City and County of San Francisco, including representatives of the Mayor's Office, the Redevelopment Agency and the Planning Department.
• The citizens of the San Francisco Bay Area
• Interested members of the planning and design professions

Success will be evaluated on the basis of:

1. The project team will conduct an extensive follow-up survey to determine the degree of public participation the website achieved. Measurable criteria will include:

• number of page views
• number and quality of responses in comment blocks
• number of posts to discussion groups

2. Subjective criteria will also be studied and reported. Live and Web-based interviews with participants will attempt to determine:

• The extent to which more people were drawn into a community decision-making process, specifically those who would not have been inclined or able to attend live meetings, workshops or hearings.
• The extent to which participants were better informed than they would have been without the website.
• The extent to which better land-use planning decisions were made, with more community support.
• The extent to which this website influences other communities to broaden community participation in design via the Internet.

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