Participatory Planning with the Internet

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. It is clearly in a project sponsor’s interest to hear from everyone who might have an interest in a project and to know early on what issues might influence the approvals process.

Until now, the barrier to citizen participation in planning decisions has been high, and consequently the rate of participation has been low. If being physically present at a public hearing, a neighborhood association meeting, or a planning workshop is a requirement for citizens to participate in planning decisions, then participation will be limited to those with spare time, a small and diminishing segment of society. As a result, planning decisions tend to be skewed toward the demands of a vocal minority, and important voices in the community are not heard.

The ways in which city planning decisions are made, and the way in which the public can interact with these planning processes, are beginning to change because of the Internet. One of the outcomes of this change will be much wider participation by the public than has previously been possible. This public participation will be supported by access to high-quality, media-rich information about development proposals and the issues surrounding land-use planning decisions.

Interactive multimedia offer powerful new tools for representing physical issues such as land-use, traffic analysis, and density. GIS, together with computer-generated urban visualization techniques, provides opportunities to inform and involve the public as never before. The Internet can enable fuller, more informed participation in planning decisions by citizens and public officials alike.

One result of the environmental and preservation movements has been the growth of a class of citizens well educated in the language and possibilities of design who feel that architecture and city planning are appropriate topics for public discussion. For design professionals, this trend has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, early consultation with users and neighbors can help identify issues and options the designer might not otherwise have considered. On the other hand, who needs yet more opinions in a design process that already seems overcrowded with kibbitzers? One thing is certain: there has never been a greater need for designers and planners to communicate effectively with diverse groups of people.

The Internet promises to be a participatory medium as well as an informational one. It can be a powerful tool for enabling communitybased design. Planners and designers are beginning to use the multimedia capabilities of the Web to make complex visual and spatial concepts accessible to a broad public. And they are using the Web’s interactive features to create a place for focused discussion and information exchange about specific developments.

Case Study: The Oxpens Quarter Initiative

Most public debate of proposed projects pits the project sponsors on one side against the neighborhood activists on the other. The process is reactive rather than proactive, and sometimes it is downright destructive. The problem for planners has been to involve the public in creating shared visions, rather than reacting to someone else’s. In Oxford, England, an innovative process was undertaken to involve the public in creating just such a vision. Oxpens, in the southwestern corner of the city, had been victimized by heavy-handed redevelopment in the late 1960s. Since then it had been developed haphazardly and was characterized by low-density, automobile-related sprawl. Oxpens had no cohesive identity, and it provided a notoriously bleak environment for pedestrians. Everyone felt that something was missing in this part of town, but when specific remedies were proposed, the ensuing debate tended to become confrontational, leaving developers and residents equally frustrated.

Instead of waiting for developers to come forward with new building schemes, the Oxford city council launched the Oxpens Quarter Initiative. Roger Evans Associates, an urban design consultant, was asked to engage city residents in a freewheeling discussion of possible futures for the Oxpens area. To reach the broadest cross section of the population, they offered several venues for participation:

The Web site includes on-line discussions of various topics and specific
locations within the study area, allowing residents to learn more
about the area’s history, provide comment to the project sponsors, and
talk to each other about the issues. Hosted by the Resource for Urban Design Information (RUDI), it has become a worldwide model for how to implement an Internet-enabled community participation process.

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