Citizen Science Perspectives on E-Participation in Urban Planning

Citizen science is a method for an interested public to share information in order to co-create scientific knowledge, typically drawing on games and hobbies and employing electronic media such as web-based data-entry forms and online social networks. Citizen science has emerged in many fields of science (e.g., ecology, astronomy, atmospheric studies, anthropology) and advanced to produce important research findings based on high-quality, reliable data collected, and/or processed, by the public. In turn, participants have increased their interest in, and understanding of, topics related to citizen science projects, and experienced greater civic engagement and social capital. Urban planning initiatives seek to engage people in activities from data gathering to community discussions. The authors review the history of urban planning models and highlight how e-participation can overcome some of the limitations in traditional planning. The authors review how information and communication technologies (ICT) for Citizen Science methods can facilitate public participation in data collection and co-creating knowledge useful to planning decisions. The authors suggest that such efforts can ensure a collaborative rather than adversarial type of public participation and have added outcomes of increasing involvement of an informed public in other aspects of the planning process.