Although overshadowed in the media, two recent initiatives by President-Elect Obama demonstrates his unprecedented commitment to Internet transparency and citizen engagement. The first concept, announced by transition head John Podesta last weekend, is called simply “Your Seat at the Table.” Obama-Biden Transition team will meet with hundreds of private organizations. Anyone they meet with must […]
Public Involvement in U. of Maryland East Campus Planning
Tonight at an event at the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning I met Harry Mattison, the author of a blog about the
Report Finds Public Participation Improves Policy
A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded public participation processes can improve the quality of policies and help them become implemented. The 270-page report is the product of a research panel of a dozen experts. The report’s primary recommendation urges “Public participation should be fully incorporated into environmental assessment and […]
The Internet as a Participation Tool
This post is Part 4 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning While the Internet makes possible new types of interactions between citizens and government, the purpose and structure of these interactions are not new. The section creates a […]
Software for E-Government
A topic I have begun to explore is the best e-government software to support public participation in urban planning. I’ve previously written about LimeHouse‘s tool, which amounts to a web-based document management system that supports the equivalent of blog comments on document sections. Adobe has been advertising their LiveCycle suite of tools heavily on the […]
Public Participation Theory
This post is Part 3 of my public participation in urban planning series, adapted from my urban planning final paper, Citizen Participation and the Internet in Urban Planning. The urban planning profession has developed increasingly sophisticated techniques and theories regarding how and why to involve citizens in planning processes, especially since the 1960s. Critics pilloried […]
Government as Data Source
A provocative new article in the Yale Journal of Law and Technology titled “Government Data and the Invisible Hand” (PDF) makes the proposal that the federal government should abandon their attempt to create public websites, and focus almost entirely on providing data in standard formats for use by private websites. The article points out greater […]