PDF(2.7mb) - 國家政策研究基金會

136 Taiwan Development Perspectives 2009
I. Introduction
Local knowledge is recognized as an important
element in the process of urban planning. Kahila and
Kytta (2006) name local knowledge ‘soft data,’ which
means residents’ living experience. Involving local
knowledge is a bottom-up or citizen-oriented policy
design orientation and plays a decisive role in building
democratic legitimacy. However, due to the constraints
of communication skills and expression skills of the
public, local knowledge is usually ignored in the process
of policy making. This is one of the reasons why the
planning processes of most community development
programs have traditionally been government-centered,
and therefore have incurred much criticism for not allowing
direct participation of the stakeholders of the
programs.
With the advent of modern information technologies,
there are numerous Internet-based interaction mechanisms
offered by public organizations, including
governmental websites, online conferences and Internet
opinion polls. These technologies have potentials to
improve the quality of democracy by reducing the cost
of communications. The public participation geographical
information system (PPGIS), in particular,
has become one of the hottest innovations because of
its potential to enable direct public participation as well
as involve local knowledge in public policy-making
processes. This paper deals with how PPGIS can be
used in urban policy planning, and how PPGIS is practiced
in Taiwan.
II. GIS and PPGIS
The geographic information system (GIS) represents
a promising generation of powerful tools developed
to improve public policy-making processes. The
applications of GIS combine the complexity of the
physical landscape with citizen information, and provide
useful information for urban planners and public
managers in general. For example, GIS allows emergency
planners to calculate emergency response times
in the event of a natural disaster. GIS might also be
used to find wetlands that need protection from pollution.
Greene (2000) asserted that GIS can be utilized in
many subfields of public policy, including education,
health and security, public services, environmental
protection, social services and international relations.
Carr (1999: 222-223) lists six kinds of GIS applications
used in the public sector. They include:
1) Emergency Dispatch: GIS is and important
tool for public agencies in improving response time and
in minimizing arrival time for emergency services;
2) Land Use Planning: GIS provides decision
makers with high-quality information relating to land
use;
3) Healthcare Planning: “medical geography” is
a term that reflects this application of GIS, analyzing
the linkage between poverty and disease being a major
case;
4) Infrastructure Planning: GIS is used in debt
management and evaluations of the potential impact of
tax revenues;
5) Political Campaign: GIS provides data for
analysis needed to design campaign strategy, media
advertisement and resource allocation; and
6) Reapportionment: GIS can integrate population
data with detailed maps to allow decision-makers
to reexamine political boundaries.
GIS has been utilized in the public sector since the
early 1960s, but considered not user-friendly. On the
one hand, GIS offers public access to cultural, economic
and biophysical data generated by governments,
private sector organizations and academic institutions
(Aberley and Sieber 2002), thereby making more
optimistic social scholars see it as a tool for public
participation (Carver 2003); but on the other, the applicability
of GIS systems has been limited by their generally
low usability. Advanced knowledge of GIS and
general computer technology is often necessary to operate
a GIS system (Aangeenbrug 1992). As a result,