Geoweb Methods for Public Participation in Urban Planning: Selected Cases from Poland

Abstract

This chapter presents Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) methods and tools based on open data, public input and Web 2 technologies, employed in participatory urban planning processes. The recent focus on sustainable urban development and livability has increased the demand for new data sourcing techniques to capture experiences, preferences and values of urban dwellers. At the same time, developments of geospatial technologies and social media have enabled new types of user-generated geographic information and spatially explicit online communication that is place-specific and often content-rich. As a result, new methods for engaging large groups of individuals that supplement, and sometimes, supplant traditional methods (e.g. public meetings) have emerged. Despite different application domains (e.g. land use and zoning, transportation, urban revitalization, green infrastructure and landscape audit), many participatory planning processes have shared common steps, in which PPGIS/Geoweb methods have been applied including (1) collection of values and preferences to inform the creation of plan draft and (2) discussion and feedback from participants on the plan draft. This chapter presents two methods and the corresponding tools that have been used by the authors in a number of participatory planning cases between 2014 and 2017. The cases concerning various planning problem and scales have been situated in two metropolitan areas of Poland.