Applying ICTs to Public
Participation in Enhancing the Urban Environment
Giovanna
Anselmi, ENEA and Ugo Mocci,
ICT
Issue: The possibility of
combining active public participation with the interactive communications that
is enabled by the Internet can be exploited to create a city monitoring system
enabling public feedback on services and participation in monitoring urban
areas, thus integrating the existing monitoring mechanisms and improving the
efficiency of the city’s public services.
Relevance: The implementation
of web-based interactive systems can complement a range of strategies and
enable better knowledge to be obtained of the city’s problems, improve the
efficiency of public services, inculcate greater public respect for the
environment, stimulate wider participation in local democracy and foster social
cohesion.
The
views expressed here are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of
the European Commission.
Introduction
Applications
at local level of ICTs such as the Internet mainly focus on to providing
solutions to citizens’ individual needs, for instance to provide access to
general and specific information, administrative applications, newsletter
services, etc. However, their use can readily be extended to provide local
authorities with incident reports about inefficiencies and other difficulties
occurring in urban areas. Various sorts of Web-based systems and applications
are being developed to facilitate interaction between citizens, local
government and public services. These are mostly aimed at making general
interest information and administrative applications available on the Web at
all times, send local alerts to registered groups, managing citizens’
complaints, etc. A number of European Projects (e.g. TELECITIES: http://www.telecities.org/; MAJORCITIES: http://www.majorcities.org) are actively
developing systems to improve interaction between the local authorities and
consumers and citizens and to encourage the provision of innovative services to
citizens.
In
addition to addressing citizens’ individual needs, local authorities are
also concerned with the difficulty of maintaining or improving the quality of
the environment and of collective public services. These
difficulties are often exacerbated by factors such as rapid urbanization, loss
of identity of towns and cities, worsening public behaviour, difficulties
integrating ethnic groups, etc. (and all these difficulties are expected to
worsen in the future as demographic forecasts indicate that probably 70-80% of
humanity will live in a few dozen conurbations by 2030-2050). In this respect
the short-term policy taken by the authorities includes administrative and
organizational measures, e.g. setting up agencies responsible for monitoring
the quality of public services, adopting more flexible rules for the management
and administration of city service companies, training auxiliary personnel
appointed to specific functions (overseeing parks, gardens, bus lanes, etc.),
promoting special "city cleaning days" devoted to gathering and
removing abandoned objects, and others.
None of
the measures mentioned above is likely to be able to offer a definitive
solution (e.g. the efficiency of public services is limited by the difficulty
of creating a true services market with multiple competing enterprises; the
recruitment of additional staff, although possibly effective in the short term,
can result in a costly and less flexible solution in the medium-to-long term,
etc.). Although measures of this kind confirm the existence of the problems and
the willingness of the bodies responsible to address them, to be successful
local authorities’ efforts need to be complemented by further intervention
strategies aiming at bringing cities and their inhabitants closer together. In
this context ICTs can be seen as a reliable means of intervention so to make
citizens central players in city monitoring and at the same time actually
change public behaviour and improve the operational chains used to deliver
public services.
Although various sorts of Web-based
systems and applications are being developed to facilitate interaction between
citizens, local government and public services, these are mostly aimed at
making general interest information and administrative applications available
on the Web
Public
participation in monitoring the urban environment
In many
countries the role of public participation is recognized as being central to
improving the quality of life in cities (Box 1). However it has been noted (World Markets Research Centre, 2001) that
initiatives involving citizens are often characterized by an educational approach
towards citizens, i.e. seeking to educate and inform them, but ignoring the
possibility that individuals like to play an active role in monitoring city
life and the quality of public services. This observation explains why to date
there have been no effective plans to coordinate and utilize citizens’ efforts
for monitoring the status of cities as a whole. Currently, members of the
public contribute to monitoring their town or city by sending letters to
newspapers or to the authorities. Newspapers, other media and associations
regularly receive citizens’ complaints and sometimes act as channels for them.
In spite of this, the actual impact these complaints have on the quality of the
public services is often quite limited. There is a relative lack of confidence
and limited channels for direct intervention by the citizens. There are a
number of factors accounting for this poor performance:
Many of
the limitations described above could be overcome by the web-based interactive
systems in various areas of city life.
Currently, sending letters to
newspapers or to the authorities is the main channel by which members of the
public can contribute to monitoring their town or city. However, this
traditional approach has a number of drawbacks
Box 1.
Experiences of citizens’ participation in urban government and city monitoring
|
The
interest of municipal authorities in encouraging public participation in the
information, consultation and decision-making processes concerning city
development (proposals for the Public Administration, institution of tables
for negotiation and resolution of conflicts, dissemination of information on
urban development and environmental quality, etc.) is far from widespread.
Nevertheless, useful experience has been obtained from trials based on a
variety of different approaches. A range of pilot schemes, such as
"Urban Centres" in USA and "Architectural Centres" in UK,
an initiative by the Vienna local government (http://www.wien.gv.at/: traffic, priority of public
transportation, urban expansion, Yppenplatz qualification), the
"Participation Project" involving more than 50 municipalities in
Finland, etc. offer examples of "Interactive information", in which
the information is given in a context where the way to achieve feedback is
already envisaged (information desks, websites, activity weeks, road shows,
etc.). The Oregon Model in the USA and other trials in Canada, New Zealand,
Northern Europe are examples of a more comprehensive approach. In this
approach the aim is to build up "Community visioning", i.e. a
system of objectives strategies and actions able to steer community
development. Planning for real (NIF, England), European Awareness Scenario
Workshop (DG XIII EC), Annual Democratic Plan (Arun, UK) are some examples of
"Urban Scale Design", in which the Community Visioning is applied
to building restoration, popular housing and use of public space. To manage
citizen participation various different groups of people are involved (the
population as a whole, representative groups, private and public
institutions) and sometimes permanent structures are established, such as
those in Newcastle (Community Planning and Democratic Renewal http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/default.htm;) and in Rome
(USPEL- Special Office for Citizens’ Participation and District Laboratories http://www.comune.roma.it/uspel/). All the
above approaches to citizen participation cover different phases of the
consultation and decision-making processes. Much more limited are the cases
of citizen participation in monitoring and control of the environment and
public service activities such as cleaning rivers or parks, removing illegal
posters, waste reduction, etc.). Greater stimulus and efforts are required in
this area to adopt new organizational approaches and develop new supporting
tools (e.g. CitySensor systems —See Box 2). |
The
implementation of web-based interactive systems for city monitoring
The
implementation of "digital cities" is creating a new opportunity to give
citizens a central role in city life. The presence of hundreds of thousands of
citizens and the diffusion of public Internet access points and privately owned
PCs or other devices suitable for network operations distributed all over the
city constitute a solid basis for developing powerful integrated web-based
systems which may be used to monitor towns and cities effectively.
The presence of hundreds of
thousands of citizens and the diffusion of public Internet access points and
privately owned PCs or other devices suitable for network operations
distributed all over the city constitute a solid basis for developing powerful
integrated web-based systems
The
traditional means of communication used by citizens (phone calls, faxes,
letters and e-mails), which require human interaction and interpretation, do
not allow automatic delivery and processing of the messages, highlighting the
kind of barrier that needs to be overcome. Even following a simple and
effective approach the most relevant events occurring in the towns can be
classified and described in appropriate forms made available on the web.
The traditional means of
communication used by citizens (phone calls, faxes, letters and e-mails), which
require human interaction and interpretation, do not allow automatic delivery
and processing of the messages or the subsequent generation of statistics and
reports
Whenever
citizens observe hazards, breakdowns or other problems in the city environment
or public services, they can access the dedicated web site and with the help of
intelligent wizard-style procedures can report the location, time and type of
the incident using the appropriate form. The formatted messages generated by
the public and by the system could then be channelled to the website database,
where they can be automatically verified and processed. Systems of this type
can provide a complementary approach which may be used by local authorities to
improve services and the quality of the urban environment. A citizen-centred
city monitoring and control system can allow benefits of various kinds.
Citizen-centred interactive
web-based systems can enable real-time monitoring of the urban environment and
public services. Citizens’ messages can be routed in batches to the relevant
department or service provider for action and the responses to the incidents
raised can be published on the web where citizens can monitor progress
Examples
of some of the direct benefits of systems of the type described here include
their role as a system for the real-time monitoring of the urban environment
and public services. For instance, in the CitySensor (See Box 2.) system citizens’ messages
are routed in batches to the relevant department or service provider for action
and the responses to the incidents raised can be published on the web where
citizens can monitor progress until the problem is finally solved. The
automatic collection and storage of citizens’ messages in one special-purpose
centre can allow accurate maps and statistics to be built up both of incidents
and the way they are handled by the public service companies, and thereby
improve the quality of the information on city problems and highlight any needs
to reorganize services. Moreover, the web site hosting the system is a natural
location for on-line pages and forums, where proposed solutions for urban
problems can be presented, discussed, amended and approved, further stimulating
changes in behaviour and allowing citizens to make an active contribution to
city life. This feature makes such a system a powerful tool for local
democratic participation. Additionally, the same framework can be used for
different public services, allowing management costs to be optimized and
enabling maximum scalability.
The
indirect benefits of this kind of system include they way it gives citizens a
greater sense of their role in the city life (monitoring, event signalling,
service and environmental control) and thus help overcome sense of there being
a powerful group of individuals whose complaints are listened to. Making
residents feel more closely identified with the city in which they live could
lead to improvements in certain aspects of public behaviour. In practical
terms, the implementation of feedback systems of this kind introduces a control
loop, external to both the service supply chain and the actual environmental
control processes, thus potentially enabling useful cooperation between
citizens and public service enterprises. The information gathered by the system
could allow focused monitoring and the drawing up of priority lists for
maintenance activities introducing citizens in the public service delivery
process thus enhancing efficiency and improving the overall quality of service.
The information gathered by the
system could allow focused monitoring and the drawing up of priority lists for
maintenance activities introducing citizens in the public service delivery
process thus enhancing efficiency and improving the overall quality of service
Although
trials with systems enabling public feedback on services and participation in
monitoring urban areas are still in the early stages, a number of factors can
already be identified as being important to the success of schemes of this
type. Firstly, although the system is designed to handle messages
automatically, in addition to the development effort, adequate resources need
to be set aside for website management, updating of forms, extension of
processing procedures and development of back office interfaces. Secondly,
although citizen participation in city monitoring allows both the handling of
individual complaints and statistical monitoring to be implemented in the same
framework, for convenience the two areas of functionality can be set up at
different development stages and assessed separately. Thirdly, adequate
promotion is needed (using both advertising and the educational system) in
order to ensure the citizens’ trust and overcome the possible reservations of
both local authorities and public service companies. To ease the process of
introduction, this could be limited to selected groups of people. Finally,
adequate security needs to be put in place to protect the system against
malicious intent (although it is worth noting that as the same incident will
probably be notified by many citizens a certain degree of intrinsic message
redundancy is assured). Thus, above all the website supporting the system needs
to be accessible, efficient, effective and reliable, and advanced website
technology should be used for this purpose (including user-friendly
multilingual interfaces, access control, dynamic forms handling, on line
database management, expert systems and decision-support systems, etc.). The
example of the CitySensor system currently under development in
Rome is described in Box 2.
Box 2.
Planned trial in Rome of the CitySensor system
|
To
explore the applicability of systems enabling public feedback on services and
participation in monitoring urban areas, and to raise the profile of such
systems among actors responsible for city government or public services, a
field trial has been designed and is due to be implemented in Rome. The trial
anticipates monitoring the status and smooth running of roads, cycle paths,
parking areas, traffic, public transportation, urban cleaning, public
lighting, environmental pollution, and the effectiveness of other public
services (first aid and hospitals, post offices, schools, etc.). All these
items have been categorized in terms of the most significant incidents and
properly formatted in order to be automatically collected and processed by CitySensor.
By logging on to the dedicated web domain roma6tu.it, citizens will be
able to perform a number of functions, including:
Citizen
infocities, once processed and analysed as a whole, will also be the basic
source of both the roma6tu Archive, containing all
"Infocity" messages, photos and e-mails sent by citizens to roma6tu
and the roma6tu Environmental and Public Service Observatory,
which will provide on-line statistics and reports on the most significant
events in the city. |
Conclusions
Demographic
analysis indicates that as much as 80% of humanity may live in just a few dozen
large conurbations by 2030-2050 and even Western countries will have to cope
with continuous changes in environmental and social conditions in the large
cities that can weaken the relationship between citizens and the town or city
in which they live.
In this
context, local policy-makers need better environmental and social monitoring
systems in order to acquire a fuller knowledge of their city’s problems,
contribute to a more effective and economic provision of collective public
services, improve public behaviour in terms of respect for the environment,
stimulate wider participation in local democracy and greater social cohesion.
In the
framework of public participation in the government of towns or cities, the
implementation of systems enabling public feedback on services and
participation in monitoring urban areas, which combine citizens’ active
participation with advanced Internet tools, represents a complementary strategy
to give citizens a greater sense of their active role in city life.
Keywords
city public services, urban sensorial systems, participated towns, environmental and public services
observatory, internet city site
References
Contacts
Ugo Mocci,
ICT expert
Tel.: +39
670 47 50 16, e-mail: umocci@inwind.it
Giovanna
Anselmi, ENEA/UDA/ADVISOR
Tel.: +39 636 27
28 01, e-mail: ganselmi@sede.enea.it
Panayotis
Christidis, IPTS
Tel.: +34
95 448 84 93, fax: +34 95 448 82 79, e-mail: Panayotis.Christidis@jrc.es
About the authors