A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded public participation processes can improve the quality of policies and help them become implemented. The 270-page report is the product of a research panel of a dozen experts. The report’s primary recommendation urges “Public participation should be fully incorporated into environmental assessment and […]
Posted in Public Participation, eGovernment, ePlanning, Urban DevelopmentThis post is Part 4 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning
While the Internet makes possible new types of interactions between citizens and government, the purpose and structure of these interactions are not new. The section creates a road […]
A topic I have begun to explore is the best e-government software to support public participation in urban planning. I’ve previously written about LimeHouse’s tool, which amounts to a web-based document management system that supports the equivalent of blog comments on document sections.
Adobe has been advertising their LiveCycle suite of tools heavily on the D.C. […]
This post is Part 3 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning.
The urban planning profession has developed increasingly sophisticated techniques and theories regarding how and why to involve citizens in planning processes, especially since the 1960s. Critics pilloried the […]
A provocative new article in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology titled “Government Data and the Invisible Hand” (PDF) makes the proposal that the federal government should abandon their attempt to create public websites, and focus almost entirely on providing data in standard formats for use by private websites. The article points out greater […]
Posted in eGovernment, ePlanningThere’s a reason I told Planning magazine I’m excited about “more accessible and interactive approaches to the massive amounts of GIS data that planners have.” After all, it’s the one type of data that has not been adapted to truly seamless social platform. I sketched out how such a system could be applied to vacant […]
Posted in Technology, ePlanningThis month’s Planning magazine features a story about the uses of technology for urban planning that features quotes from me. (Planning is the monthly member magazine of American Planning Association.) The article describes the blogs, video and photo sharing, survey, and other online now available to activists and government planners alike. While a good overview, […]
Posted in ePlanningI’ve written before about potential applications of Web 2.0 to the field of urban development. On Planetizen, I described some of the ways the new tools could be used to inform and engage the public in urban planning issues. On this blog last August, I described how a well-designed interactive website could help the city […]
Posted in Urbanism, ePlanningThe blog I co-founded about urban development issues in and around College Park, Maryland, Rethink College Park, has been named one of the web’s Top 10 Urban Planning, Design, and Development websites by the planning portal Planetizen. The award recognizes the hard work and support of all the site’s contributors and others who have provided […]
Posted in ePlanningPlanetizen has asked me for nominations for their annual list of the web’s top planning and development websites. Winners in 2007 included architecture blog BldgBlog, Arlington County’s Commuter Page, and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy’s Visualizing Density tool. The criteria simply request sites that are a service to the planning community.
What sites should I […]

