{"title":"Guiding Informed Choices on Participation Tools in Spatial Planning","authors":"Giorgos Somarakis, A. Stratigea","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019070103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019070103","url":null,"abstract":"Participatory Planning (PP), as a streamline approach in coping with sustainability concerns, is nowadays largely acknowledged in research and policy makers' community as a ‘bridge' between decision-making processes and society. Its implementation implies substantial preparation, ending up with certain choices on participation tools, relevant for use at the different stages of the planning process. However, lack of planners' deep insight into such tools leads them to either follow well established traditional planning paths, discouraged by a possible failure of participatory attempts; or join PP processes that lead to unsuccessful planning outcomes and frustrating participation results. The contribution of this article lies on increasing capacity of planners towards more informed PP tools' selection by: providing an exhaustive list/explanation of factors affecting such choices in each single PP context; and sketching the architecture/functioning of an e-Decision Support System (e-DSS) as a tool supporting planners towards the design of more effective PP processes.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019070103","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44302157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modelling Urban Environments to Promote Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity","authors":"A. Kaczorowska, M. B. Pont","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019070101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019070101","url":null,"abstract":"Urbanization effects on vegetation and the alteration in land use is likely to be the major driver of fragmentation and the loss of ecosystem services (ESS) and biodiversity. Understanding varying levels of biodiversity within cities is pivotal to protect ESS. However, due to the high complexity of urban systems, ecological connectivity assessment in urban planning remains challenging. This article evaluates policy documents and tools for ESS assessment in Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm is an interesting city for studying ESS planning and management since Sweden has a long tradition of formal policy for biodiversity management. An overview is presented of tools and approaches to measure ESS at different scale levels used in the urban planning process in Stockholm. Their application illustrates the complementary nature of these tools, but also the need to integrate them in a platform based on a GIS (Geographic Information System) model. Ultimately, the development of such an integrated tool should inform and support planning practice in guiding urban systems towards greater sustainability.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019070101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49488496","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mapping Game Mechanics for Learning in a Serious Game for the Energy Transition","authors":"C. Ampatzidou, K. Gugerell","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019040101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040101","url":null,"abstract":"The integration of learning goals with game mechanics in serious games used in urban and spatial planning processes has the potential to enable game designers and planners to create games with narratives tightly aligned to particular processes and lead to increased learning outcomes. This study presents the results from testing Energy Safari, a serious game for the energy transition in the province of Groningen, and empirically associates specific game mechanics with learning events, derived from players' reports. The research is based on the analysis of post-play questionnaires. Play-testing Energy Safari illustrates that different learning events can be triggered by the same game mechanics, an observation which can be applied in serious game design to facilitate players with different learning needs and styles. In addition, play testing to evaluate the learning performance of serious games should be integrated in the game design process. However, to achieve lasting learning and actionable knowledge, serious games should be used complementarily with other civic participation methods.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41559481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Smart-Cities to Smart-Communities","authors":"F. Filippi, C. Coscia, Roberta Guido","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019040102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040102","url":null,"abstract":"Nowadays, through ICT supports and their applications, the concept of smart cities has evolved into smart communities, where the collaborative relationship between citizens and public administration generates multi-dimensional impacts: urban sites are living labs and agents of innovation and inclusion. As a first step, this article aims to critically review the state of the art of the assessment methods of these impacts through a set of synthetic indicators; the second step is to elaborate a specific framework to evaluate quality of life through a set of impact indicators for smart communities and inclusive urban processes. According to some referenced authors, cities and communities are smart if they perform well in six smart categories: smart economy; smart people; smart governance; smart mobility; smart environment; and smart living. Considering a recent experiment carried out in Turin (Italy), the authors propose a methodology, whose trial is ongoing, based on a hierarchical multiscale framework defining a set of smart community indicators.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040102","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42595257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Use of Geo-Questionnaire in Spatial Planning","authors":"Edyta Bąkowska-Waldmann, T. Kaczmarek","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019040103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040103","url":null,"abstract":"Changes in the attitude of local authorities towards the managerial processes of local governments have opened the area for cooperation of many actors in decision making processes. Taking into account the complexity of urban planning it is necessary to search for methods facilitating the participatory planning processes. Of potential use are internet tools based on GIS, supporting the engagement of the public in the processes of management and consolidation of local inhabitants. One of such tools is the geo-questionnaire developed within the project: Geoportal supporting public participation in urban planning (GEOPLAN). The aim of the article is to present these results of six pilot studies of e-consultations performed in Poznań and Łódź agglomerations (Poland). Subsequent sections of the article present characterization of Public Participation Geographic Information System (PPGIS) tools and assessment of the possibilities of their use for spatial management on the basis of opinions of local inhabitants and local authorities. Attention is also paid to the legal and organizational challenges related to implementation of internet consultation processes in Poland. Solving these problems may lead to increased contribution of local society and greater effectiveness of decisions made in spatial management at local levels.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040103","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46777427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Participatory E-Planning With Civic Crowdfunding","authors":"R. Goodspeed","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019040104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040104","url":null,"abstract":"Civic crowdfunding, or recruiting participants and collecting financial donations online for local development projects with public benefits, is an increasingly popular method for participatory e-Planning at the neighborhood scale. However, little is known about the donors' backgrounds, project involvement, or social capital outcomes. This article reports on a survey of 154 donors to ten such projects that finds that they are geographically diverse, are older and whiter than the project tracts, report some volunteering activities, and experience modest changes to social capital outcomes. The article discusses implications of the findings, such as how practitioners can ensure inclusion of diverse people and encourages participation among donors, and what future research is needed.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019040104","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47543447","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Guhathakurta, Ge Zhang, G. Chen, C. Burnette, Isabel Sepkowitz
{"title":"Mining Social Media to Measure Neighborhood Quality in the City of Atlanta","authors":"S. Guhathakurta, Ge Zhang, G. Chen, C. Burnette, Isabel Sepkowitz","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019010101","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010101","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents a model to classify perceptions of various Atlanta neighborhoods based on social media. Tweets were extracted using Twitter's API and categorized to determine 1) whether they are neighborhood related; 2) whether a positive or negative sentiment could be assigned, and 3) whether they belong to one of eight categories of neighborhood quality assessments. These eight categories are public safety, transportation, density, walkability, maintenance, aesthetics, open space, and quality of dining and entertainment venues. Tweets that were related to neighborhood quality and geo-tagged accounted for 4% of all filtered Tweets. Overall 49% of neighborhood perception related Tweets were extracted to create an indicator of perceived neighborhood quality. The study then compared the perception of neighborhoods from social media analysis with quantitative indicators of neighborhood quality.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010101","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42668573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
L. Damurski, J. Pluta, Jerzy Ładysz, Magdalena Mayer-Wydra
{"title":"Online or Offline Services for Urban Neighbourhoods?","authors":"L. Damurski, J. Pluta, Jerzy Ładysz, Magdalena Mayer-Wydra","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019010104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010104","url":null,"abstract":"Services originally developed as natural concentrations of human activity, reflecting the Christallerian hierarchy of central places. Today, those natural mechanisms are challenged by strong competition from online facilities. More and more services are offered by the internet and this affects the traditional ‘bricks-and-mortar' urban development. In this article, the main research problems of the inter-relatedness of real and virtual environments are defined in the context of urban neighbourhood service centres. The process of conversion from offline services into online ones is treated as a canvas for building a comprehensive research model for studying the development of the contemporary urban services sector in the local scale. Particular research questions and hypotheses are formulated and followed by a set of methods for further empirical research.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010104","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42324609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Artopoulos, Panayiotis Charalambous, C. Wehmeier
{"title":"Immersive Computing and Crowd Simulation Techniques in Modelling Urban Commons","authors":"G. Artopoulos, Panayiotis Charalambous, C. Wehmeier","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019010103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010103","url":null,"abstract":"This article reports on the technical development and testing of the basic components of a virtual environment platform that could be used for the cross-disciplinary study of complex urban realities, such as the historic city of Nicosia, Cyprus - the last divided capital of Europe. This platform captures data of virtual visitors' movements in space, and the article suggests that these data could help better understand the impact of planning scenarios and design interventions in open public spaces that used to be popular among the citizens of the historic city. The article presents how this platform uses interaction and immersion opportunities to engage citizens and stakeholders in the management of public open spaces that are associated with built heritage. Crowd simulation is discussed as a computational technique that when is combined with the presented virtual environment platform, and under the right conditions, would contribute to a digital practice for small-scale urban modelling. However, it is beyond the scope of this technical note to provide a full empirical testing and validation of the presented immersive virtual environment.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010103","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70456427","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Citizen Participation and the Rise of Digital Media Platforms in Smart Governance and Smart Cities","authors":"Olga Gil, María E. Cortés-Cediel, Iván Cantador","doi":"10.4018/IJEPR.2019010102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010102","url":null,"abstract":"Many governments and firms do believe that technology can supplant governance and human responsibility. This belief poses the question of who will really benefit from smart cities. This article explores this fundamental question through the study of digital media platforms. The ultimate goal is to understand the link between e-governance and smart city initiatives in our cases of study by testing whether these projects are explicitly for citizens. This article shows how e-platforms represent the use of information and communication technologies with the aim of encouraging citizen participation in decision-making processes, improving information and service delivery, reinforcing transparency, accountability, as well as credibility. Thirteen digital media platforms are surveyed, mostly in cities across countries. These e-platforms raise implementation challenges for both firms and policy makers, and new research opportunities for scientist to build up new research and to experiment with the aim to make the benefits for citizens wider and the participatory dimension stronger.","PeriodicalId":43769,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of E-Planning Research","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.4018/IJEPR.2019010102","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46035974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}