Exploring the added value of digital tools in citizen participation in urban planning

Abstract

In a time of global crisis due to the CoViD-19 pandemic, much has been asked for participatory urban planning projects to continue to be able to employ citizen participation; digital participation tools may be an answer to this issue. In academic literature, many questions about the usefulness and added value of Planning Support Systems (PSS) have been asked. There seems to be an implementation gap: although many different kinds of digital urban planning tools are available, not many of them are used in practice. This master’s thesis poses that the added value of PSS and non-planning specific tools can be found in citizen participation. In order to explore this hypothesis, three cases of participatory urban planning projects that use digital participation tools in the municipality of Utrecht in The Netherlands have been studied: Redesigning Kanaalstraat / Damstraat, Redeveloping Thomas à Kempisplantsoen and Utrecht Elektrisch. These case studies use different digital participation tools such as Digital Participation Platforms (DPP) and Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) to varying degrees. This research employs a mixed methods approach, which consists of policy document analysis, semi-structured expert interviews, computer assisted content analysis and digital data analysis. The case studies have been explored on different elements that make up the conceptual model: what kind of digital participation tools they use, what actors are involved, what type of participation they employ, what instrumental knowledge is created in the digital participation, how much citizen participation takes place and how much decisive power citizens have within the projects. The added value is stated to be in the enabling of new and more groups of citizens, being able to create different kinds of knowledge and possibly giving citizens a higher place on Arnstein’s (1969) ladder of participation. As is the case with traditional participation, there are still some challenges and problems with using digital tools in supporting citizen participation. For example, using digital participation tools generally results in less personal interaction and in-depth engagement between project managers and citizen participants. When digital tools are employed project managers should be weary off the fact that although they may reach a wider target audience, it also reaches a different audience and target groups of traditional participation methods might get excluded. There is potential in digital participation methods to increase citizen participation and citizen power, though this research suggests that a mix of traditional methods and newer digital methods is the most effective way to reach this goal. The willingness of project managers to invite citizens to participate and collaborate with them is still an important factor in the value of digital participation, as is the case with traditional participation. Urban planning project teams must carefully evaluate what their goal is and which methods, whether digital or traditional, are most effective and reaching those goals.