Effective urban planning

Oslo faces rapid demographic growth, and the city needs new housing for its growing population. To tackle the population growth, Oslo needs to grow also within its limits. This compact city development affects those already living in the city, and sometimes people are afraid of the changes in their living environment

Need for more efficient and effective participation

Public participation happens often in late stages of the planning process, when plans are brought out to public discussion, often in meetings and public hearings. The feedback gathered in meetings is often not in directly usable format for planning. When participation occurs late on in the process, citizens might feel they have not had the possibility to air their fears about the coming changes. When participation is organized early on, citizens feel more committed and opposition is reduced.
Online civic engagement enables hard-to-reach demographic groups to participate, and it is cost-efficient to organize participation for thousands of people. Moreover, when you need to ask where, a map is worth more than a million words: place-based comments and discussions enable efficient analysis and visualizations.

Crowdsourcing resident insight to create a flourishing city

Within the iResponse project, map based questionnaires developed by Mapita Ltd. will be used to integrate resident’s insights in the planning and decision-making process. This tool for public participation GIS brings together local knowledge and citizen participation to improve the quality of planning and decisions.

A case study will be carried out in a planning project decided upon with the urban planners of Oslo municipality. The citizens and other stakeholders will be involved in the early stages of the project so that the design of the contents of the crowdsourcing tool will be transparent and responsible. Simultaneously, the urban planners will have their say on what kind of user knowledge is most appropriate for planning and decision-making. The aim is to contribute to a real case study and create needed knowledge that can support a dialogue process between planners, citizens, stakeholders and researchers.

Want to get involved? We want to hear from you!

Please contact
Anna Broberg (Mapita)anna.broberg@mapita.fi

Maarit Kahila (Aalto University): maarit.kahila@aalto.fi