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Using PPGIS to Involve Citizens in Urban Policy Planning 137
GIS systems are often thought of as elitist technology
(Pickles 1995) or expert GIS (AI-Kodmany 2002;
Kingston 2002a).
Responding to this criticism, many developers of
GIS systems have begun to pay attention to lower the
barriers to public involvement and participation since
the early 1990s (Schlossberg and Shuford 2003).
They merged this mainly technology-based spatial
analysis tool with the concept of participatory democracy
to come up with a concept of Public Participation
Geographical Information Systems (PPGIS). Craig et al.
(2002) viewed PPGIS as “a broad tent with multiple
meanings and a global reach,” and said “there are many
emerging forms of community interaction with GIS that
are linked to the social and geographic context of production
and implementation.” Kahila and Kytta(2006)
point out that PPGIS brings the “soft data,” the knowledge
and opinions of citizens or residents, into the
process of policy-making. PPGIS is intended to provide
a mechanism to enable community engagement, incorporate
local knowledge, integrate and contextualize
complex spatial information, and allow participants to
contribute inputs and analyze alternatives in public
policy-making processes (Weiner, Harris and Craig
2002; Sieber 2006). In other words, the advocates of
PPGIS see it as a people-centered alternative to the use
of traditional expert-driven GIS methodology.
III. Key Elements for Successful PPGIS
It is self-evident that one of the most important
performance criteria of a PPGIS is participation. The
technical aspects of the system that influence the system
performance cannot be overlooked (Jorda 1999).
Kingston (2002a) asserted that in designing and implementing
a PPGIS, the following issues need to be
carefully considered and addressed: access to the technology,
GIS and IT understandability, data and copyright
issues, and trust and response legitimacy. Steinmann
et al. (2004) argue that interactivity, usability, and
visualization are the three most important sets of criteria
on the basis of which PPGIS evaluations should be
undertaken. These are also essences of a PPGIS.
i. Interactivity
Interactivity implies a response to the messages or
behaviors between GIS users and the computer server
(Steinmann et al. 2004). According to AI-Kodmany
(2002), there are three types of PPGIS interactivity,
namely one-way, two-way, and three-way spatial communications.
Compared with traditional paper maps or
traditional GIS systems, it improves the users’ ability
and opportunity to express their preferences and opinions
to a great extent. Hence, the interactivity of PPGIS
is a substantial improvement. Kingston (2002a) recognized
that in order for PPGIS to be a fundamental tool
for facilitating a better social understanding of decisions
made, a key aspect of these systems is that they
should provide a two-way flow of information between
the client (the public) and the server (the authority).
AI-Kodmany (2002) provided a similar perspective,
stating that to become a robust tool for use in participation,
GIS should be a medium for two-way, spatially
based information exchange.
Above all, a website with one-way spatial communication
does not, by definition, qualify as a PPGIS
(Kingston 2002a). To construct a GIS with a participatory
mode, building in a two-way or three-way communicative
function is necessary. Three-way spatial
communication allows the public to view the opinions
of all participants in a democratic decision making
process (AI-Kodmany 2002).
ii. Usability
The term ‘usability’ means the ability of a user to
utilize GIS and is usually measured from the user’s
point of view (O’Looney 1997). Only the most usable
GIS websites ensure that all people, with distinct and
diverse backgrounds, can browse the site. In short,
usability is one of the important factors influencing
public participation in policy development.
Why is usability especially important for PPGIS?
Steinmann et al. (2004) provide two reasons: first, the
specialized functionality that supports online GIS in-