The value of Community Informatics to participatory urban planning and design: a case-study in Helsinki

Joanna Saad-Sulonen ¹ and Liisa Horelli²

¹ Aalto University, School of Art and Design
²  Aalto University, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Finland

Abstract

The aim of the article is to present and discuss the potentials of community informatics for participatory planning and design, as well as for ICT-mediated participation in general. The article is based on a case study of the co-design of a shared yard in Helsinki. The application of ICTs meant that tools such as the local website and the Urban Mediator were used as platforms and media to co-create, share and distribute information concerning the progress of the design of the yard. We argue that CI-assisted participatory planning and design provide a viable perspective and significant contribution to ICT-mediated participation in urban issues.

Introduction

The inclusion of stakeholders in planning processes is referred to with different names both in practice and theory, such as collaborative, communicative, deliberative and community planning.  Urban planning is also opening up to the use of ICTs as a major tool for citizen participation. However, the application of Community Informatics in urban planning is still rare in the Finnish context. Community Informatics (CI) means, according to Gurstein (2007), the application of ICTs for the empowerment of local people and communities.

We use the term ICT-mediated citizen participation in urban issues as a neutral concept, because it is not tied to any particular field of study, contrary to e-participation, which is very much linked to government and the European Union jargon. ICT-mediated citizen participation in urban issues comprises aspects of the relationship between participation and technology being addressed in such areas as governance, urban planning, information systems and interaction design, geography, citizen activism and community development (Figure 1).

Figure 1: ICT-mediated citizen participation in urban issues

According to Medaglia (2007), the digital terminology is quite fuzzy and needs further definition (see also Macintosh & Whyte 2007). E-participation is closely tied with e-democracy and e-governance (OECD 2002). E-participation, which promises to lead to a more participatory form of democracy, is applied in e-voting, e-referendums, e-initiatives, e-consultations, e-petitions, and e-party meetings. E-participation can be direct or indirect. Its scope of impact ranges from the reception of information, via consultation to real participation or transaction, such as e-voting, and blogging (McCaughey & Ayers 2003).

The same kind of ladder of participation can also be applied in e-planning. However, e-planning is not usually included in the e-family, as the field itself is still in a phase of construction. Silva, who has edited the first handbook on e-planning (2010), emphasizes the need for developing the relationship between planning theory and the use of ICTs in planning. He also understands e-planning as being part of the shift towards a more participatory and collaborative type of planning.

Foth et al. (2009, 99-102) have compiled a summary of the evolving links between planning and technology. Most examples concern Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Planning Support Systems. Although recent developments explore the potential of using these technologies for enhancing citizen participation (e.g. public participation GIS; Sieber 2006), they still remain expert-based systems. Other recent developments stemming from the area of information systems and interaction design, such as urban computing (Paulos et al. 2009) and urban informatics (Foth 2009), explore more mundane tools, such as mobile phones and Web 2.0 systems, and their availability for use and adaptation in the urban context. NeoGeography also addresses the potentials of these tools, but focuses on the production of spatially related information by non-professionals (Rana & Joliveau 2009). E-activism, or cyberactivism, refers to the use of ICTs and online tools that support the activities of self-organized citizen movements (McCaughey & Ayers 2003). Community Informatics focuses on the empowerment of communities and on the support of community development processes.  CI can also be seen as an enabler of activism (Gurstein 2007). Although traditionally concerned with the rural context, CI is opening up to explorations situated in urban contexts as well (Gurstein 2007; 2010).

ICT-mediated citizen participation should, in our opinion, be approached holistically. CI offers an interesting perspective in this respect, as it enables the integration of a range of ICT-mediated participatory methods and processes, which are embedded in community development and local governance (Figure 2). Our research problem is the following: What is the added value of CI to participatory urban planning? What are the characteristics and consequences of CI-assisted participatory planning and design?

The aim of our article is to present and discuss the potentials of community informatics for participatory planning and design, as well as for ICT-mediated citizen participation in general. We will also elaborate their consequences for the empowerment of young people.

The article is based on a case study of the co-design of a shared neighbourhood yard around the Roihuvuori Youth Centre, in Helsinki.  We argue that CI-assisted participatory planning and design provide a viable perspective and significant contribution to ICT-mediated participation in urban issues. We start by framing our theoretical approach after which we proceed to the description of the case study. We conclude by discussing the research results in the light of the theoretical framework.

Framing the theoretical approach

The complexities of urban problems usually require an integrative framework that is built from different perspectives. The framing of our theoretical approach comprises an examination of community informatics and its relationship to the participatory processes of planning and design within the bigger context of ICT-mediated citizen participation.

Community Informatics – a field in flux

The basic definition of Community Informatics (CI) as the application of ICTs for enabling and empowering community processes (Gurstein 2007) is still quite open[1]. CI is still a field in flux with on-going discussions in terms of what issues and concepts should be included or excluded.

CI strives to bring to communities such Information Systems (IS) that might be able to translate the essence of how the community functions or should function. Thus, it is hypothesized that CI facilitates the self-development, self-management and empowerment of the (local) community (Gurstein 2007). Historically, CI has adopted Management Information Systems (MIS) as its model and has attempted to articulate its own strategies and techniques by transferring relevant MIS-strategies from the realm of corporations to that of communities. Therefore, CI addresses the potentials to develop Information Systems for empowering communities, in the same way as MIS has tried to empower management and corporate organisations (Gurstein 2007). CI has also a strong civic drive. It attempts to counterattack the commercialised Internet environment by emphasising the relevance of local and public presence and by advocating the need for communities to be in control of their own web portals, applications and tools (Schuler 2000; de Cindio & Ripamonti 2010).

CI is also particularly concerned with the question of the Digital Divide and the use of ICT by less favoured groups worldwide. In addition, CI is often associated with efforts that aim at the empowerment of rural communities instead of the urban ones. Gurstein (2007) points out that it is more difficult to identify the “community” in urban contexts and the consequent need for appropriate CI-applications, tools and sites. However, we believe that it is the “urban CI” (Gurstein 2010), which can enhance ICT-mediated citizen participation in important environmental issues of everyday life. This implies the enhancement of the development, maintenance and sustainability of ICT tools for participation. We believe that CI provides new opportunities for digitally mediated participation by bringing forth questions that concern the role of informatics for communities.  Furthermore, CI offers a community-driven approach to the design and use of ICT.

Last but not least, CI can help communities to become truly glocal[2], by providing them local and translocal networks that might influence global affairs (Horelli & Wallin, forthcoming; Horelli & Schuler, forthcoming).

Due to its background in information systems science, CI seems to imply at times a technology-utopian attitude (Pitkin 2001). The embedding of CI in a larger socio-cultural framework, such as participatory planning and design, might be beneficial for both the development of CI and its outcomes for the community.

CI in the context of participatory planning and design

It is important to recognize that some of the issues related to citizen participation in general, and to ICT-mediated participation in particular, are planning issues. Due to the increasing complexity of issues to be solved, urban planning can be viewed as closely embedded in community development and local governance (Wallin & Horelli 2010; see Figure 2). As community development addresses issues that are related to the self-organization and self-management of communities, it is naturally linked to Community Informatics (Gurstein 2007). Local governance refers to the management and leadership processes of local decision-making bodies, but also to the informal networks, local fora, projects and working groups that “govern” local affairs. The foci of expanded or embedded urban planning are, besides traditional land use and zoning, also the conditions for the development of socio-technical networks, assisted by urban and community informatics (Foth 2009; Gurstein 2008). The implementation of planning takes place, besides building, also through the communication and co-ordination of community-based activities.

The application of ICTs in this expanded view of urban planning provides a special locus for, what Wallin and Horelli (2010) present as user-sensitive service design. In this paper, we propose a more generic view and consider all participatory design processes as bridge builders between urban planning, community development and local governance (see Figure 2). These processes can include the co-creation of common urban space, communal and public services, as well as digital or hybrid tools for citizen participation. The processes related to the latter are what Gurstein refers to as: “appropriating, integrating and repurposing existing technology as community supports, while equally facilitating the development of technologies which in their very design reflect the specific ontology of communities.” (2007,39). This resonates with what Lucy Suchman (1994) refers to as “artful integrations”, or practices that relate to the integration of hybrid systems of different devices and technical systems.  Karasti and Syrjänen (2004) use the terms “artful infrastructuring” or the blurring of boundaries between use, tailoring, maintenance, reuse, and design. These definitions also bring forth the relevance of Participatory Design[3] for CI systems (Carroll & Rosson 2007).

Figure 2: The general participatory design2 approach acts as a bridge builder that embeds urban planning in community development and local governance through a variety of methods and tools (adapted from Wallin & Horelli 2010).

Participatory urban planning means in general a planning approach that advocates and facilitates the inclusion of stakeholders in the planning process. Such approaches have been frequent, although not mainstream, since the 1960’s. With the communicative “turn” in planning in the 1980’s and 1990’s, participatory planning has become a theoretical, if not a practical norm, in many countries (Healey 1997).

The cycle of participatory planning consists of a continuum of different phases: initiation, planning and design, implementation, evaluation and research, and maintenance. Enabling tools support the participatory activities of each phase (Horelli 2002; Figure 3). These tools enhance the transactions and knowledge creation of the stakeholders during the phases of participatory planning. They can be classified as diagnostic, expressive, conceptual, organisational and political (Horelli 2002). Horelli includes ICTs, ranging from expert CAD and GIS systems, to Internet-based tools, under the category of expressive enabling tools. The latest technological developments make it possible to include ICTs in the other three categories as well. These tools can, in fact, be regarded as different types of patterns that can be chosen for different purposes depending on the context (Schuler 2008; de Moor 2009). They also make up the ecology of tools necessary for e-planning[4] (Wallin et al. 2010). Participatory planning becomes e-planning when participatory activities are expanded beyond face-to-face interaction to include ICT-mediated interaction that is independent of spatial and temporal constraints. Participatory e-planning can be defined as a socio-cultural, ethical, and political practice in which women and men, young and older people take part offline and online in the overlapping phases of the planning and decision-making cycle (Horelli & Wallin 2010).

We have been applying a particular version of participatory planning, called the learning-based network approach to planning and community development (Lena; Horelli 2006). In this approach, the cycle of participatory planning is seen as a locus for learning and capacity building for the engaged stakeholders (Horelli 2002). When participation is seen as a continuous learning process, the resulting empowerment of the individual through competence building will foster confidence in further participation (Horelli 2002; Koskinen & Paloniemi 2009). Thus, the learning process can also be enhanced by applying tools, such as ICTs, in a way that increases the understanding of the use, adoption and even adaptation of the ICT tools.

Figure 3: A schema of the methodological approach to participatory planning and design

In the study presented in this article, we examine the phases of initiation, and planning and design of the co-design of a common yard in Helsinki. We identify the different CI tools that act as enabling tools for the participatory urban planning process as well as enhance the learning process of the stakeholders (see Appendix 1).

Application of CI-assisted participatory planning and design in a shared neighbourhood yard

Roihuvuori, a residential area of 7400 inhabitants, is situated 10 km east of the centre of Helsinki. It is part of the bigger mixed-use area of Herttoniemi in which we have conducted action research since 2004 (Wallin & Horelli forthcoming; Horelli & Wallin in press). The Roihuvuori Youth Centre[5] and its surrounding yard are rented by the Youth Centre from the Helsinki Real Estate Department. The need to co-design the 6500 m2 yard came up in the Local forum meeting in December 2008, which was held at the Roihuvuori Senior Centre, next to the Youth Centre. A fenced part of the yard is in active use by a local kindergarten that uses the Youth Centre building in the mornings. The rest of the yard is open to everybody, but only the western corner is in active use, by a group of local alcoholics. The yard is not maintained and trees and shrubbery have grown wild between granite rock formations, typical of the south of Finland.

The preparation for the co-design and planning of the yard were made in a series of meetings at the Youth Centre in which the Youth Centre and kindergarten staff, representatives of local projects, members of the neighbourhood association, researchers (us), as well as local officials from different city departments took part.  This group chose CI-assisted participatory planning as the strategy for the project.

The planning of the yard officially started in February 2009, when the Helsinki Real Estate Department agreed to hire an architect to facilitate the co-design and to make the preliminary plans on the basis of the negotiations and dialogue with the stakeholders. The phase of co-design lasted six weeks. Funding for the implementation was sought from a special neighbourhood fund that granted money to city departments. At the end of the co-design, in June 2009, the City granted 450 000 Euros for the implementation of the yard.

The role of the researchers was to facilitate, monitor and assess the CI-assisted participatory processes. The theoretical framework described in this article influenced the participatory action research strategy. It guided the methodology that comprised the application of different enabling tools (e.g. paper map annotations, wiki design, Urban Mediator) and data gathering techniques (observations and focus group interviews). The research questions were: What are the outcomes of the CI-assisted participatory planning? What did the young participants learn? What kind of role does CI play in the project?

Traditional and ICT-mediated participation hand in hand

Participatory planning is not a common practice in Helsinki, where the official municipal planning is mostly top-down. However, the director and the employees of the Youth Centre wanted to involve adolescents and also other potential users of the yard in the co-design process. This served the goal of improving the integration of the Youth Centre in the community, which so far had not been welcomed by the residents. The yard was also supposed to serve the day care activities of young children in the mornings. Consequently, the kindergarten staff wished to involve young children and their parents in the co-design of the yard. The representatives of the local projects wanted to increase spaces of physical activities for different age groups, including seniors who used the Senior Service centre, next door.

Co-design workshops were organised for six different groups: adults, seniors, pre-school children (two groups), young children’s parents, and adolescents. The main method was the “walk around the block” and the annotation of the ground plan by using red and yellow post-its.  In addition, a so called “wiki design”[6] session was organised for the residents by Peter Tattersall, a student of architecture. A discussion with some of the alcoholics who had taken on drinking in one corner of the yard was also arranged. Their participation in the workshops proved however too difficult to organize during the timeframe given.

In addition to the enabling methods described above, the goal of the application of community informatics was to expand the face-to-face participatory process, by involving residents and particularly adolescents in the strategic use of online tools (see Table 1). The Internet was thought to provide opportunities to those who could not take part in the workshops.

Table 1: The list of the various CI tools used in the first phases of the participatory planning process in Roihuvuori.

Existing mailing lists were used first, in order to reach out for the different age groups. It was then decided that the Roihuvuori local website should be used as the main interface for publishing information regarding the ongoing participatory planning processes. The neighbourhood association of Roihuvuori maintains the local website, which runs on a platform provided by the Helsinki Association of Neighbourhoods, Helka ry (Horelli & Wallin in press). Most of the content of the website was published by a volunteer Webmaster, but the discussion forum was open for all parties.

In order to translate the ground plans, annotated by different age groups, into annotated online maps, and to share and distribute information concerning the different visions for the yard, we proposed the application of the Urban Mediator software (Saad-Sulonen & Suzi 2007; Saad-Sulonen 2007). Urban Mediator (UM) is a framework that enables to create, collect and share location-based information (see http://um.uiah.fi). UM is an example of CI applications, even though it is still a research tool in beta phase and hosted by the university. UM offers a set of tools that enables users to set up topics of interest in order to collect location-based information. The topics are managed and maintained by the users or groups of users (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: Ideas of the youth group on the ground plan of the site (top) and the architect’s proposal (bottom). These can be accessed on http://um.uiah.fi/hki

During the initiation phase, only the tools already familiar to the stakeholders, such as mailing lists, were used. During the planning and design phase however, the different stakeholders experimented with new tools (Table 1). These tools enabled them to reach out for others and include them in the participatory process, which then took place in both face-to-face and ICT-mediated mode.

Young people learning digital citizenship

Besides involving the young people in urban design, the instructors of the Youth Centre wanted to provide them with a work-experience type of activity by organizing a series of ten participation events for them. This was thought to activate more adolescents to visit the centre, which was relatively new in the area. The Roihuvuori Youth Centre has a computer room with four PCs, which made it easy to integrate the use of ICT in the activities of the group. The instructors also thought that the adolescents might become technology experts in the project.

A group of seven young people was recruited by the youth instructors during one of their regular field trips to the local school. The chosen group comprised two boys and five girls in the age of 13 to 17 years. The group met at the Youth Centre ten times during two months. The sessions lasted between two and a half to three hours on Friday afternoons. The program of the sessions was set up by the Youth instructors, in collaboration with one of us, who acted as the technology and media facilitator (see Appendix 1). The goals of the sessions were to get the adolescents acquainted with one another, to collaborate with other participants, to analyse the yard, and to learn how to handle various ICT tools.

The last planning session comprised a collective self-assessment. The youth instructor and the researchers discussed with the adolescents what they had learnt.  The group gave many positive answers ranging from technical skills (the Urban Mediator tool), via planning and design skills (how to transform what appears as an ugly yard into a nice place), to collaborative work and consensus-building skills (working in groups). They also stressed the importance of personal growth, as well as emotional and cognitive skills (overcoming shyness, increased confidence in oneself, ability to network with other adolescents and with adults; see Appendix 1). Consequently, the CI-assisted participatory planning and co-design were an opportunity to learn on different fronts, which empowered the adolescents to become digital citizens: both expert ICT users and active persons (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: The youth group learned important skills relevant to the digital citizenship by increasing both participation abilities and the knowledge of ICT use.

The involvement of young people in the participatory design (the workshop, the Wiki design session, and the final presentation event) opened up new realities of collaborative planning, including the necessity to work with people that they would not normally interact with. The face-to-face interactions enabled them to realize that adult residents, architects, and even people they considered as having authority (for example the director of the Youth Centre) are, after all, not as one of them had feared, “thinking machines”. The adolescents confessed at the end of the project that they had been surprised by the informality of the process, although they realized that it was a serious endeavour.

The use of the Urban Mediator enabled the young people to think and act as masters of technology, instead of being passive users and mere consumers (Gurstein 2001; 280). The Urban Mediator, which had been developed with a co-design approach, has a set of flexible features that enable the user to tailor the functionalities according to their own needs (Saad-Sulonen and Suzi 2007; Botero & Saad-Sulonen 2008; Saad-Sulonen & Botero 2008; see Figure 4). The handling of these tools required the adolescents to be active decision-makers, who had to simultaneously address strategies of collaborative action, as well as to appropriate the technology in order to support these strategies.  For example, the group chose together a shared username and a password so that anybody from the group could edit and moderate their Urban Mediator topics. This obliged the group to experience a process of building common understanding of their responsibilities towards the information to be published via UM. It also triggered the building of collaborative ownership of their project. The group did not want to appoint a topic administrator, but preferred a situation where anyone could be the administrator.

Despite the fact that this project, because of limited funding, did not further the co-design of the Urban Mediator, some of the young participants expressed, however, ideas for refining it and making it more attractive for young people. When they were asked, whether they would be interested in participating in the co-design sessions of UM development, they responded positively. We can say that their answer hints to the possibility of intertwining participatory design processes for the development of ICTs with those of participatory urban planning. The iterative spiral of participatory planning (Figure 3) could therefore include, not only the use of ICTs, but also their co-design by the communities of stakeholders.

The catalytic role of community informatics

Koskinen and Paloniemi (2009) have presented a model of Environmental Policy Action as a Social Learning Process in which two alternative paths to participatory processes exist. The first one is involvement, which means organised encouragement. The second one is authentic participation, which is self or group motivated. We can similarly regard CI-assisted participatory planning and co-design as a form of social learning and empowerment. This project provided both involvement of young people and authentic participation that was self and group motivated (see Appendix 1).

One of the shyer girls told us that she had developed more confidence in voicing her opinions. And an assertive boy said that he had learned to listen more to others.

The role of CI was significant as a catalyst of collective behaviour in the group (see also Rettie 2008). In order to find design solutions, the youth group used a diversity of channels to find information and also to involve their peers to the process. First, the group got acquainted with the CI-type of tools, such as the UM, and learned to apply them. They used the UM to ask others to mark on a map of Helsinki interesting places that can provide inspiration for the design of the yard (Figure 4). The group also made use of other ICT-based information channels, such as Facebook and IRC Gallery platforms, in order to inform others of the participatory planning project they were involved in (see Table 1). The young people acted as, what Wellman et al. (2003) label, “portals”. Each young person in the group diffused information about the participatory project via their accounts on social media sites, and invited members of their own (trans)local networks to influence the co-design of the yard.

The CI-assisted participatory planning approach also created what Percy-Smith (2006) refers to as spaces for dialogue between the young and adults. One of the young participants had, since the first sessions, expressed the idea of a graffiti wall for the yard. He discussed this idea with the other group members, the youth instructors and the different adults whom he encountered in the process. The graffiti wall, which is controversial in the context of Helsinki, became part of the group’s own proposal and was later included in the architect’s plan. This plan was available for comments via the Urban Mediator. One of the comments, left by an adult resident, showed that not all adults are against the ideas of the young:

“The proposal looks generally good, this graffiti wall is a daring bet and even though it probably has its opponents, I believe that the adolescents will like it”.

The youth group also used the video platform Floobs for online and real-time broadcasting of the presentations in the final session (see Table 1 and Appendix 1). The young acted as technical experts for the whole neighbourhood, providing it with the possibility to follow the session via the neighbourhood web site in which a video window was embedded.

In sum, the youth group put efforts on many fronts and learnt different skills in order to address the complex situation of their own participation and to involve other young people. It was apparent that several aspects of ICT-mediated participation, such as e- planning, the use and appropriation of existing ICT tools and social media, and the development of new features and tools, came into play. They reinforced both each other and the participatory endeavour as a whole.

The application of CI did not however succeed in engaging the whole community of Roihuvuori. In spite of efforts to mobilise diverse groups, only a small minority of the residents came to the different meetings and used the online tools. The design process had even an adverse effect, as a citizen movement was started by parents of small children who wanted to preserve a former open-air playground and who regarded the co-design project as a threat to their cause. Additional challenges encountered also included the lack of information sharing by city officials regarding the funding grant and the production of the final plans for the yard. Finally, in the implementation phase that is ongoing at the time of writing this article, the group of young people is no more involved in following up the project, even though the initial aim was to involve them. One can speculate that it is due to the fact that the youth instructor, who was leading the planning sessions, has moved to another job. Nobody at the Youth Centre has taken it upon him/herself to pursue the collaboration with the young people. Also, the architect who had run the participatory workshops has not been hired for the implementation phase. Important questions therefore remain: how should participation itself be organised and designed and how should the political conflicts of power be dealt with (Susskind et al. 1999; Sibbett 2002; Fortunati 2009).

Conclusions

Our research problem dealt with the questions concerning the added value of CI to participatory urban planning and the characteristics and consequences of CI-assisted participatory planning and design to ICT-mediated citizen participation. The added value that CI seems to provide to participatory planning is that it involves a step towards a more holistic understanding of the relationships between planning and technology. Whereas the OECD and also European Union jargon around e-participation is closely tied to top down definitions of democracy and imposes ready-made software solutions for e-voting, e-petitions etc., CI brings forth a local and collective bottom-up perspective. It is evident that the integration of CI and participatory planning and design enrich traditional urban planning, which turns into e-planning. On the other hand, e-planning provides significant tangible and intangible contributions to ICT-mediated citizen participation.

One of the characteristics of CI-assisted participatory planning and design is that the application of the different participatory design processes enhances the embedding of urban planning in both community development and local governance (see Figure 2). Participatory design of both the yard and the application of CI cut through urban planning, community development and governance, depending on the different stages of the planning process and its implementation. For example, during the planning and design stage, an array of participatory methods, both face-to-face and mediated by ICTs, enabled stakeholders to take part in both the design of the yard and in the adaptation of various tools for engaging with a larger community.

Another characteristic is that the socio-cultural and political process of participatory planning and design has to be enhanced by both traditional and ICT-tools in complementary ways.  Thirdly, the use of multiple channels for the gathering and diffusion of information seems to be important.

The consequences of CI-assisted participatory planning and design can imply diversified experiences of learning, besides concrete results in the form of a design in which the stakeholders can find at least some of their important ideas.  If the planning process is continuous and comprises several sessions during the planning cycle (see Figure 3), it is possible to build capacity in digital citizenship skills, as was the case with the youth group in the case study.

The future challenges comprise the need to identify and define the range of relevant trans-disciplinary approaches that can address issues of ICT-mediated participation holistically and in a citizen-driven manner, keeping in mind the economic aspect as well.

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Appendix 1

The table lists the process of young people’ s involvement in the planning of the neighbourhood yard, with their own feedback and the general learning issues.