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Research projects

Digital planning? Integrating New Information and Communication Technologies in Urban Planning

About this project

Project information

Project status

Completed

Contact

External

Since the early 1990s, citizen participation has been furthered by political and administrative elites in Europe. In the wake of several symptoms of crisis in democracy and administrative decision-making, a growing number of public authorities have been looking for new means to increase citizen participation. Especially at the local government level, several new ways of involving citizens in public policy processes have been discussed and tested. More recently this debate has been fuelled by new information and communication technologies (ICTs), as they provide new public spaces and opportunities for more participatory and deliberative forms of decision making. According to the proponents, the Internet could sit at the core of reinvigorated institutions that could truly listen to and thus re-engage the public.

How likely is a change of planning institutions and practice amidst this far reaching technological change? Analyzing the interplay between ICTs and institutional arrangements, this project has conducted both extensive (quantitative analyses of web pages and surveys) and intensive (case studies) empirical work, focusing on attitudes as well as on actual behaviour.

The project was funded by Formas between 2004-07