The Everyone City: How ICT-Based Participation Shapes Urban Form

Sara Levy Karel Martens Rob van der Heijden

5/21/2015

Type
book
Region
Sector
Urban Planning
Category
Citizen Engagement and Crowdsourcing, Smart Cities
Methodology
Conceptual Framework
Objective
Effectiveness, Participation

Abstract

Citizen participation is a cornerstone of urban planning. One common criticism is that the process can be cumbersome and slow. However, in the face of recent advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), those problems can be easily overcome, making it possible to extend public participation to a wider sphere of urban planning matters. But what do we know of how ICT-based public participation affects urban form? What does a city shaped by social networks and other ICT-tools look like? We develop an agent-based model of urban growth to improve our understanding of these issues. Our model consists of a spatially disaggregated, micro-economic-based, real estate market model coupled with an ICT-based planning process. In the model, public participation is based on social network affiliation and preferences over the height of buildings.