ICT to evaluate

participation in

urban planning:

remarks from a

case study.

Francesco Rotondo, Francesco Selicato

e-mail: f.selicato@poliba.it; f.rotondo@poliba.it

"Cities, Technologies and Planning"CTP 12

June 18th - June 21th, 2012Salvador de Bahia, Brazil

Questions for Today

0. Introduction

1. Evaluating participation in urban planning.

2. ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning.

3. “PartecipaPUG”: a participation process in the South of Italy

4. Conclusions

Introduction.

The work study the ICT available to evaluate participation in urban planning, starting from a relevant experience made in Italy inside a funding programme of the Italian Ministry for Innovation and Technology.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Evaluating participation

in urban planning.

Influential authors in the field of urban planning such as Healey (2009), argue that however evaluation is defined and implemented it remains, nevertheless, a key activity in urban planning.

Others, such as Faludi (2006) , consider evaluation in planning as a complex, yet necessary practical exercise.

The theory of communicative action has become a mainstay of planning.

Few, however, have attempted to understand how to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of participatory practices in urban planning.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Evaluating participation

in urban planning.

The evaluation of participatory processes in urban planning thus becomes not only an adequately constructed opportunity in order to generate expert judgement (scientific knowledge, importance of method, etc.) but, rather, the means to supporting informed dialogue between expert knowledge and the ordinary.

Alexander (2006) argues that the complexity of assessment in planning schemes is largely due to three fundamental issues:

1. The complexity of objects and subjects of evaluation such as policies, plans, projects, local contexts, key-players, stakeholders and, at the same time, the complexity of the evaluation process involving different disciplines, theories, methods, tools and techniques;

2. The inter-subjectivity that somehow undermines the legitimacy of findings and objectively derived conclusions;

3. The uncertainty of planning actions concerning the prediction of an unknown future.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

ICT to evaluate participation in urban

planning.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

It is immediately clear that such an issue is fundamentally cultural and organizational in nature, not resolved through the simple introduction of technology into participatory processes. Technology is capable, however, of assisting in change and its role could be relevant.

It should be noted that forms of evaluation of policies, programs and plans are traditionally carried out and that often, such assessment is carried out ex-ante, in certain cases is on going yet almost never ex-post.

The support offered by ICT in the evaluation of participatory processes in urban planning suffers, therefore, from the lack of a comprehensive evaluation framework of participation within decision-making processes in general.

ICT to evaluate participation in urban

planning.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Governments now routinely employ ICT in supporting processes of political action, as is highlighted by the case study presented below.

E-mail, online discussion forums and message boards now appear on a range of government websites at various levels, interested in urban planning and territorial cohesion, and have recently been joined by tools such as the social networks Facebook and Twitter, increasingly employed in political life to develop and manage the social networks that accompany participative processes.

Before carrying out assessment it is therefore necessary to identify the aim of the online involvement of citizens and the viewpoint by which the evaluation is made (political, technical or social).

ICT to evaluate participation in urban

planning.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

The political perspective asks: has consultation followed guidelines for conducting consultations issued by the government and are stakeholders satisfied by the process?

The technical perspective addresses: to what extent did the design of ICTs directly affect e-consultation outcomes? In designing the e-consultation there is a need to take into account technical skills, the target audience and the location of participants.

The social perspective asks: were the contributions relevant to the policy topic, were they informed contributions and were the contributions debated and supported (or not) by others?

ICT to evaluate participation in urban

planning.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

the complexity of such an operation is emphasized as assessment must take into account the interdependencies between the design of computer systems, the implementation of urban policy and communication practices between citizens and governmental agencies.

Assessing the tangible impact of participatory process on choices made within a plan is a particularly challenging issue that may prove difficult to resolve.

“PartecipaPUG”: a participation process in

the South of Italy

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

The goal of the collaborative process was that of gathering and formalizing the views and wishes of residents and stakeholders in order to define a new local development plan in the city of Monopoli in the South of Italy (50.000 Inhabitants, distributed on a territorial surface of about 156 km2)

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

The process

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

In 2005, based on the successful results achieved, according to public opinion, from previous experiences in collaborative planning, the town council decided to accompany the creation of the new municipal development plan with a public participation process, integrating the knowledge of citizens with the techniques of planners through a logic of mutual learning.

The process was finally initiated in 2006 following a successful proposal in a national request for tender from the Italian Ministry for Innovation and Technology aimed at funding projects supported by experimental e-democracy tools, combining the use of traditional participation methods with ICT support techniques within collaborative processes

The process

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

The process

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Until the first half of 2007, around 1200 questionnaires have been collected, by which around 200 online; 12 "brainstorming" sessions have been carried out off-line with the video format available on-line along with a total of around 1400 geo-referenced data records in a data base.

Around 1,000 individual have participated in Web-based or traditional meetings, work sessions and online forums. The web provided an office environment open 24 hours a day.

The cognitive maps, developed with the results of questionnaires and interactive maps, highlighted social consensus through a geographic database, making the basic themes of the Plan clearly available for political decision-makers and citizens themselves.

Confirming results found in the literature (Coleman, Gøtze, 2001), it should be noted that in the case presented, politicians did not use the web in order to interact with participants.

The tools

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Assessing participation in the “partecipaPUG” process.

From a political perspective: the consultation has followed guidelines for conducting consultations issued by the national government and stakeholders have been satisfied by the process renovating their political sustain.

From a technical perspective: the design of ICTs directly affect e-consultation outcomes, for the availability of documents and results and the possibility to interact with the planning staff. Forums about four priority areas (port, coast, countryside, historical centre and city centre) where useful to address few but relevant decisions.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Assessing participation in the “partecipaPUG” process.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Assessing participation in the “partecipaPUG” process.

From a social perspective: the contributions where relevant to the policy topics, also if they were not always recognised as a aprticipation result

they were in many cases informed contributions (thanks to the documents available on line)

the contributions were debated and supported by others, also if the the Internet has seemingly become a seat of misinformation, a number of local websites have appeared that are aligned with different political perspectives, creating "a war of mixed information, dominated by opinions that have often contributed to the mystification of the planning process”.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

Conclusions.

ICT has been useful to evaluate participation process making available all the phases of the process on line in every moment so that each one could evaluate the level of the process and its utility.

As in the case of the number of visits of the web site, on line evaluation tools could be always available differently from those off line.

Evaluating ICT capacity to support the assessment of participation in planning process still remains a need in its different political, technical and social aspects and this work could be considered just a first approach.

Evaluating participation in urban planning - ICT to evaluate participation in urban planning - “PartecipaPUG” - Conclusions

THANKS FOR YOUR

PATIENT ATTENTION!!! Francesco Selicato

Francesco Rotondo

Department of Civil Engineer and Architecture,Polytechnic of Bari, Technical University (Italy)

e-mail: f.selicato@poliba.it; f.rotondo@poliba.it;