Citizen Participation in Digitised Environments in Berlin: Visualising Spatial Knowledge in Urban Planning

Ajit Singh and Gabriela Christmann
Additional contact information
Ajit Singh: Dynamics of Communication, Knowledge and Spatial Development Research Department, IRS–Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Germany
Gabriela Christmann: Dynamics of Communication, Knowledge and Spatial Development Research Department, IRS–Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, Germany / Department of Sociology, School of Planning Building Environment, TU Berlin, Germany

Urban Planning, 2020, vol. 5, issue 2, 71-83

Abstract: Digital information and communication technologies influence not only on urban planning but also citizen participation. The increasing level of politically driven involvement of the public in urban planning processes has led to the development of new participatory technologies and innovative visual tools. Using an empirical case study, the article investigates a completed participation process concerning an e-participation platform in Berlin, while focusing on the following questions: (1) How are visualisations communicatively deployed within e-participation formats? (2) In what ways do citizens communicate a kind of spatial knowledge? (3) Which imaginings of public urban space are constructed through the use of visualisations? The exploration of the communication conditions and the ‘methods’ employed will demonstrate the way participants visually communicate their perceptions and local knowledge as well as how they construct their imagining of urban places. In this context, visualisations in participation processes are understood as products of ‘communicative actions’ (Knoblauch, 2019) that allow people to present their visions in ways that are more understandable and tangible to themselves and others. Within this context, by the example of the state-driven e-platform ‘meinBerlin’ a discussion will trace how far digitalised and visualised communicative actions from Berlin residents contribute to the social construction of urban spaces and the extent to which they can be considered a part of cooperative planning.

Keywords: citizen participation; digitised environments; e-participation; meinBerlin; spatial knowledge; urban planning; visual methods; visualisations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3030 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:urbpla:v5:y:2020:i:2:p:71-83

DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i2.3030

Access Statistics for this article

Urban Planning is currently edited by Tiago Cardoso

More articles in Urban Planning from Cogitatio Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by António Vieira () and IT Department ().