Daniel Kaplan - Portail documentaire du Ministère de l'Ecologie

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Further research into the validity of visualization
methods and metaphors is needed.
Online planning/design
Online planning (design) is interactive,
involving those for whom the planning is (should
be) done. It ties to a long tradition of public participation,
which has proved to be a task far from
simple. With the help of ICT one hopes to be more
successful using the democratic potential of the new
technologies. Of course, the latter assumes universal
access, meaning that IT is accessible to all people in
all places at all times which is rather a myth than a
fact [Drewe, 1998]. Unless one makes work of it,
trying to empower those “falling through the net”.
Online planning is about bringing those
planning closer to those planned for. In order to
achieve this, a number of obstacles have to be
overcome
• access to ICT (the Internet),
• motivation,
• understandability.
[See Tisma, 1998]
In a conventional design studio designers work
in one place on drawing boards and /or CAD. The
virtual studio differs from this in that the:
– design group is composed of people in various
locations,
– design process and designers’ communications are
computer-mediated and computer-supported,
– information “inside” the studio is handled in
electronic form,
– final design documentation is also in electronic
form.
In short, it is a networked design studio (see,
for example MIT’s Design Studio for the Future
[Mitchell and Williams, without date] or the
University of Sydney experience [Maher et al,
1996]).
Most of the examples given are rather
addressed to a technical or expert audience.
Visualization, dealt with in the foregoing section,
can help to increase understandability. So may
digital cities that are participative [Aurigi, 1997]. It
is also important to evaluate web information and
design [McMurdo, 1998]. And, finally, computer
games such as SimCity can provide users (children,
undergraduate classes and others) with an
understanding of the dynamics of urban growth
and possible decline, thus familiarizing them with
Paul Drewe
online planning/design [Adams, 1997]. It has been
pointed out that many more people are being
exposed to the game than there are professionals
concerned with the study and planning of cities
(Batty 1997. See SimCity 2000 or the SimCity Urban
Renewal Kit).
Current experiences with online design are
limited. They need to be extended. The same holds
for experiences with online planning in order to
realize its potential for enhancing participatory
planning. This, however, require tackling the
problem of ICT access. But access to ICT is not just
an obstacle to participatory planning.
It is part of the larger problem of ICT and
urban deprivation [Drewe, Fernandez-Maldonado
and Hulsbergen, 2001]. That ICT is able to rid us
from existing social inequalities straightforwardly is
a myth. The rise of ICT may rather tend to aggravate
them. That is why an integrated approach is called
for taking into account the multidimensionality of
inequalities.
Analysis
What is “analysis” about? It is about the
physical or spatial representation of virtual space
hence the opposite of visualizing physical space in
virtual space. Since we are less familiar with virtual
space it seems advisable, first, to position ICT before
dealing with the tools of analysis.
In an earlier paper [Drewe, 1998] we have
adopted the framework of an “urbanism of
networks”. This framework, in a nutshell, comprises
three interacting levels of network operators that
(re)organize urban space (see figure 1 [Dupuy,
1991, 119]).
Level one involves the suppliers of technical
networks. On level two, we find functional networks
of common-interest users. And it is at level three
that the operators of functional network make
selective use of technical networks.
If one views ICT as the latest addition to urban
technology, following water, sewerage, energy and
transport networks (as well as converging upon
them), three types of analysis can be distinguished,
for example:
– level one: maps and visualizations of Internet
backbone networks, address space, the location
and density of domain names, interconnections of
major networks of Internet-service providers
(ISPs).
– level two: the spatial representation of functional
virtual spaces (production, distribution,
consumption and personal contracts),