The Four Urban Governance Problem Types Suitable for Crowdsourcing Citizen Participation

Crowdsourcing is a method for harnessing the collective intelligence of online communities to solve specific problems or produce goods. Largely known as a business model, crowdsourcing has begun to make inroads as a supplemental public participation tool for governance, as a way to engage citizens in the business of government functions. Validating a new typology of crowdsourcing cases, this chapter outlines the four urban governance problem types that the crowdsourcing model can successfully address. This chapter also discusses the right of free speech in online crowdsourcing communities and its relevance for urban governance crowdsourcing applications in free societies. Concluding the chapter is an examination of crowdsourcing's place in the policy-advisory spectrum and the risks associated with bringing crowdsourcing applications into public participation programs.