A Theoretical Framework for the Evaluation of Massive Digital Participation Systems in Urban Planning.

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Urban development that strives to meet democratic ideals and the needs of all stakeholders, must incorporate public participation. Contemporary participation processes may employ digital tools that open new possibilities regarding the range of participants and the intensity of participation. In particular, they can uniquely allow for large and diverse groups of participants to be involved in collaborative design processes. Evaluating such processes is important because it allows for the justification of the necessary costs and efforts, as well as continuous improvement. Using the phases specified in the minimal viable process of the U_CODE project as an example, this paper aims at describing criteria for the evaluation of participation processes and propose several possible methods for their assessment. While the majority of these criteria resemble criteria traditionally used to assess public participation in general, this paper proposes an additional criterion, as well as ways of applying all of the criteria to digital participation methods. In addition, the criteria and methods described in this paper may not only be used for evaluative purposes during or after a digital participation process, but may also be useful guidelines during the planning stages of participation processes. Hence, it may help to consider these criteria to assess the value of the process during its inception stage to avoid mistakes and to enhance the democratic value of the participation process.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number3
Number of pages12
JournalJournal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis
Volume4
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2019
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85083466209
ORCID /0000-0001-7542-0243/work/142239750

Keywords

Sustainable Development Goals

Keywords

  • hofmann histstadt4d