ICT FOR URBAN PLANNING IN THE CITY OF MASSA

Council of Europe Forum for the Future of Democracy Madrid, 16th October 2008 ICT FOR URBAN PLANNING IN THE CITY OFMASSA Dott. Francesco Molinari, fmol@altec.gr

TABLE OF CONTENTS • Lessons learnt from this Case Study • Participatory Urban Planning Scenario • Issues in ICT & Urban Planning • Degrees of Innovation of this trial • Case Study Description • Location of the City of Massa • Role of the Municipality • The Massa Structural Plan • A tribute to the LexiPation Project • Fact Sheet • Technology Platform • Trials Location • Methodology for Consensus Making • The Living Labs Concept • Facts & figures from Massa “Living Lab” • Configuration and Deployment • Results • A few screenshots • Conclusions and … 

PARTICIPATORY URBAN PLANNING • Not a novel idea … • Pioneering implementations span from Finland (City of Hämeenlinna, Helsinki/Arabianranta, City of Tampere) to Kenya (Town of Kitale), from Brazil (Porto Alegre) to Germany (Berlin’s Citizen Juries, Frankfurt and Hamburg spatial discourses), from Iceland (Garðabær/Reykjavik) to (a great deal of cases in) the US … • Basic concept: to engage citizens and stakeholders in a socially constructed and mutually agreed model of urban planning / design / improvement • Open aim: harnessing collective intelligence and local knowledge to improve the quality of policy making • “Hidden aim”: to ensure better acceptance of the final planning decisions • Quite often, legislation supports the development of these experiments (“mandatory concertation”)

ICT & URBAN PLANNING • Born “offline”, Participatory Urban Planning has migrated and gained momentum from ICT implementations • A few examples: • Participatory GIS • Online Debates • “Crowdsourcing” (Jeff Howe, 2006) • Main issues: • Digital divide and Social exclusion • Involvement of participants (experts / non expert) • Handling the “Time Factor” • Preference Aggregation • Commitment of policy makers

(1/5) DIGITAL DIVIDE & SOCIAL EXCLUSION • Problems: • Lack of access • Low-speed access • Internet illiteracy • Some people’s voices are low, but “have to” be listened to • Some contents are hard to understand for normal people • People tend to make “easy” proposals, inspiring though badly “dressed” • Solutions (from the Massa case): • Alternate “offline” and “online” participatory sessions • Talk, explain, communicate… • Make it as easy as possible • Listen, listen, listen…

(2/5) PARTICIPANTS INVOLVEMENT • Problems: • People are busy during working time, tired afterwards! • They may not know about it… • They may not care about it… • They might be scared… • They would like to be asked… • They would like to be sure… • Solutions (from the Massa case): • Allow sufficient time to the preparation of trials (months rather than days) • Use a “multi-media” communication strategy • Rely on word-of-mouth • Preserve anonymity of participants • Keep people’s attention high during the trials

(3/5) HANDLING THE “TIME FACTOR” • Problems: • In a public debate, there is not time enough to let everyone have their say • A long lasting discussion usually doesn’t affect the conclusions that much • The more noise, the more room for the “tyranny” of chairperson’s decisions • Solutions (from the Massa case): • Don’t start with a predefined policy agenda • Collect citizens’ opinions as inputs for future policy drafting • Give a second chance for advice

(4/5) PREFERENCE AGGREGATION • Problems: • In a public debate, it’s usually hard to reach a common “platform” of consensus • Participants are never representative of the underlying population • Voting mechanisms may not be fair to minority opinions • Time changes people’s opinions quite often • Noise is always there • Solutions (from the Massa case): • Don’t look for “representative” advice • Profile your users during (anonymous) registration • A particular mechanism for preference aggregation known as “the DEMOS™ process”

(5/5) COMMITMENT OF POLICY MAKERS • Problems: • The known dilemma between deliberation and representation • The “vicious circle” of reciprocal mistrust (between citizens and governments) • Risk of “second thoughts” from policy makers • Strong dependence of political commitment on first feedback received • Ineffectiveness of bottom-up initiatives • Solutions (from the Massa case): • “Tie your hands” from the start with the full process explanation • Don’t ask too much, be clear with objectives • Integrate the trial in the administrative process

THE MUNICIPALITY OF MASSALOCATION • Massa is situated in the northernmost part of the Tuscany Region, in a zone where sea and land come together in a spectacular contrast created by nature. • Population is approximately 70,000 inhabitants and is distributed over 5 boroughs. 10

OVERVIEW OF THE CITY LANDSCAPE 11

ROLE OF MUNICIPALITIES IN ITALY • According to the Italian laws, Municipalities provide some basic services to the population of households and enterprises that fall under their territorial jurisdiction. • A few examples: social care, primary education, building permits, public housing, streets cleaning and maintenance, urban and land use planning. • This also gives life to a plethora of specific rules and regulations issued by the Municipalities under their constitutional autonomy. • Municipal rules and regulations must comply with the “upper-level” (Regional and State) norms and legal/administrative provisions. 12

MASSA STRUCTURAL PLAN • Long expected (> 30 years) • According to Regional Law No. 1/2005: • The Structural Plan is not just for (re)designing the landscape and framing land use, but is “the” tool for sustainable development of a given area • The Structural Plan lies under the competence of the Municipality, in accordance with “upper-level” Plans issued by the Province and the Region • The Municipality is “forced” to involve all the relevant stakeholders in the evaluation of the new Draft Plan • The idea has been to do this *before* and not *after* the preparation of a formal draft 13

PRECONDITIONS FOR THE MASSA TRIAL Scope for ICT based trials 14

LEXIPATION PROJECT’S FACT SHEET • One of the six Pilot Actions on eParticipation funded in 2006 by the European Commission • Objectives: • to integrate the Living Labs methodology set forth in the context of User led Innovation Theory with an existing technology platform (DEMOS™) allowing to conduct moderated online discourses within “small communities” of people (a sort of online focus groups or “forums”) • to define an ideal workflow for citizens’ involvement at the different stages of the legislative process • to conduct four (participatory) trials at the different “tiers” of EU institutional setup, namely: • the City State/Regional tier (Hamburg, Germany), • the Prefectural/Provincial tier (Thessaloniki, Greece), • the Municipality tier (Massa, Italy), • the small Community tier (Alston Moor, UK)

THE FOUR LEXIPATION TRIALS

DEMOS™ TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM • A server based web application • Scripting language: PHP, Optimised for MySql, Supporting additional standards like XML, SQL, RSS syndication and SOAP • A “classical” 3-tier architecture • All HTML and Layout is stored in separated XML-Files, which can be pre-produced and edited manually or generated with external content management systems. • The presentation layer can produce a large variety of formats for web browsers and other devices like mobile phones: • HTML, XML, E-Mail (rich content and MIME enabled), Microsoft-Office-Formats, PDF, WAP, RSS as well as all kinds of ASCII- and Unicode-Text files • A completely customisable layout • Additional software modules offer a variety of functions such as: • automated keyword index generation, web-GIS client, integrated web mail and other community features

CONTENT OF THE TRIALS

TRIALS FACTS & FIGURES • Hamburg: May/June 2007 (17 days) • urban planning • 285 registered users, 968 contributions, 16.000 unique visitors, 36.000 page hits • Thessaloniki: September/October 2007 (78 days) • environmental decision making • 62 registered users, 35 contributions, 12.000 unique visitors, 10.941 page hits • Massa: November/December 2007 (45 days) • urban planning • 93 registered users, 202 contributions, 1.800 unique visitors, 21.000 page hits • Alston Moor: December 2007/January 2008 (36 days) • local legislation review and amendment • 273 registered users, 52 contributions, 464 unique visitors, 7.106 page hits

THE LIVING LABS CONCEPT Source: Niitamo & Kulki (2005)

LIVING LAB CONFIGURATION WORKFLOW • Contextualisation: meaning all the preparatory actions involved in the trial, from the collection of background material to its publication on the public administration’s web site • Selection and motivation of participants: meaning the activities aimed to restrict / widen the panel of citizens and/or stakeholders representatives that will be involved in the trial • Concretisation: meaning the actual trial setup,measurement of participants characteristics, description of the thematic focus, statement of objectives from the Administration and supply of pieces of draft/approved legislation (if existing) and other background material to support an informed judgement • Running of the trial: use of the DEMOS™ system made available within LexiPation to reach an agreement with participants (if possible) or to collect and cluster the public opinion through moderated online discourses • Feedback from results: the internal, and usually partly undisclosed, activities leading to harmonisation of law-making activities with the trial outcomes Source: Pierson & Lievens (2005)

TRIALS DEPLOYMENT

MASSA TRIAL CONFIGURATION

SCREENSHOTS FROM MASSA SITE http://pianostrutturale.comune.massa.ms.it

ONLINE DEBATES ORGANISATION

EXAMPLES OF DISCUSSION TOPICS • How to increase the ratio between number of private parking sites and number of homes (cars) • Up to which extent the availability of parks and green areas should be extended (beyond a given minimum standard) • How to cope with the social needs of some intensively populated areas of the city • Which incentives might well increase the use of public transport by the citizens • How the outlook and use of existing cycling lanes can be improved • How to reduce the negative impact of noise, traffic etc. on the coast “belt” 26

“THE DEMOS PROCESS”http://www.demos-project.org Three discussion phases: • Broadening • Initiate the forum, facilitate and broaden the debate; identify the most important aspects or subtopics of the chosen subject matter, also by conducting polls or surveys within the participants. • Deepening • Initiate a (limited) number of sub-forums e.g. on the basis of the poll or survey results; this leads to intense discussions on specific aspects in smaller groups of interested participants, while the main forum is still there to “catch” those participants who want to enter the discussion or keep it on a more general level. • Consolidating • Close the sub-forums and transfer the summaries and related survey results into the (still existing) main forum, to see the particular subtopic as part of the ‘big picture’ that will finally emerge.

EXAMPLES OF INPUTS RECEIVED • Create speedy road deviations avoiding traffic congestion for those who simply need to go across the City centre • Increase the number of public places and central streets totally closed to the traffic • More (free of charge) parking areas surrounding the City centre • A number of public buildings should be restored and recreated for public use • Services and functions locations should be moved away from the City centre, to reduce traffic congestion 28

CONCLUSIONS • The LexiPation project successfully tested the integration of an existing ICT platform (and process) for moderated discourse making within an innovative participatory urban planning (and more generally: policy design) workflow • “Living Labs” has proven especially helpful in ensuring a timely and appropriate deployment of ICT in the context of eLegislation, in terms of • integration of relevant stakeholders, • uninterrupted support by politicians, • dissemination and marketing activities to arouse the public’s attention and involvement. • Results seem to be less dependent on the institutional “tiers” of Public Administration involved, more on local (pre)-conditions such as: • the topic of discussion (idea generation better suited) • familiarity with Internet debates of the local population • potential for reuse in the legislative process • a careful configuration of the “Living Lab” trial

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON… • Organisational Impact • Time is needed to properly customise the platform from scratch (probably saved in next experiments) • A strong commitment from IT staff (monitored by the political side) is also needed • Socio-Economic Impact • What happened next? The “electoral cycle” killed the experiment… • The sustainability issue • That was a “stone in the pond” • How to ensure replication etc.?

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION • Q&A • Contact: fmol@altec.gr • Project Website: http://www.lexipation.eu • Trial Website: http://pianostrutturale.comune.massa.ms.it • Disclaimer: The present research was part funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 Call for Pilot Actions in the topic of eParticipation. However, the opinions expressed here are solely of the Author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of any European Communities Institution.

REFERENCES • Daren C Brabham (2007), “Crowdsourcing the Citizen Participation Process for Public Planning Projects”, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1123325. • Paul Chege (2006), “Participatory Urban Planning and Partnerships Building: Supporting Provision of Access to Basic Services for the Urban Poor”, Proceedings of the 5th FIG Regional Conference, Accra, Ghana. • Jeff Howe (2006), “The rise of Crowdsourcing”. Wired, 14, 6 (June): http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html. • INTELCITIES Project (2006), Electronic and Mobile Participation in City Planning and Management. • Akito Murayama (2005), “Governance for Sustainable Urban Regeneration”, Proceedings of the IFHP Spring Conference. • Veli-Pekka Nitamo & Seija Kulkki (2005), “State-of-the-art in utilizing Living Labs approach to user centric ICT innovation – a European approach”, http://www.cdt.ltu.se/main.php/SOA_LivingLabs.pdf?fileitem=2402350. • OECD/World Bank Institute (2007), Beyond Public Scrutiny: Stocktaking of Social Accountability in OECD Countries. • Jo Pierson & Bram Lievens (2005), “Configuring Living Labs for a ‘thick’ Understanding of Innovation”, Proceedings of the EPIC Conference, pp. 114-127.

ICT FOR URBAN PLANNING IN THE CITY OF MASSA