Citizen informatics: Integrating urban data and design for future stakeholders

Abstract

This paper describes a range of existing software tools and prototypes for ICT-supported participatory urban design and planning as a subset of participatory governance, and outlines key features of a future software architecture capable of supporting urban planning and pre-design practices that are both more inclusive and more rigorously evidence-based than the current state of the art. The authors propose a scenario in which existing tools and practices can be adapted to co-evolve with complementary developments in the realms of data literacy and collaborative design media, towards the evolution of expert public realms, i.e., societies whose lay citizens could be as expert and engaged in matters of design and governance of complex built environments as researchers and professional experts are today. The paper is offered less as a compte-rendu of research than as an RFC (Request for Comment) in the spirit of Steve Crocker’s RFC 1 of 1967.