The representation for all model: An agent-based collaborative method for more meaningful citizen participation in urban planning

Abstract

Our Model is designed to greatly increase public participation in urban planning and make it more citizen-friendly. We use an agent technology consisting of a pair of opinion-miner recommender agents which, through mining of the opinions of citizens, make recommendations to planners on the design of the master plan. The advantages of using recommender agent technology in our DSS Model are that it accelerates acceptance of planning proposals and creates more participatory urban planning. A particularly innovative feature of our Model is that public participation occurs both before and during the development of the master plan, and in a citizen-friendly way. With our Model, planners come up with citizen-sensitive proposals and are able to more accurately predict the reaction of citizens to them. The case of the redesign of the Diagonal Avenue in Barcelona is provided as a concluding example. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.