Crowdsourcing for Geodesign: Opportunities and Challenges for Stakeholder Input in Urban Planning

This chapter examines the relationship between geodesign and crowdsourcing, informing urban planning by collecting the opinions of stakeholders. It focuses on conditions for facilitating democratic participation in urban planning in light of the Brazilian legal framework, and on possible interactions between participatory urban planning and crowdsourcing. Collecting opinions, preferences, and impressions by a local community is a fundamental aspect of public participation in planning, seeking valuable information that can be used in geodesign. We demonstrate how online crowdsourcing techniques can be used to efficiently gather citizen views and opinions. A case study developed as part a course taught at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, called Collaborative Mapping and Citizen Participation, is presented. In the case study, students were asked to develop a volunteered geographic information (VGI) project to collect and analyze urban values of citizens of the São Luiz and São José neighborhoods in the Pampulha region in Belo Horizonte, and to show different approaches to using citizens as information providers. We demonstrate how simple mapping techniques can be instrumental and revealing citizen stakeholder preferences and values.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17738-0_25

This chapter examines the relationship between geodesign and crowdsourcing, informing urban planning by collecting the opinions of stakeholders. It focuses on conditions for facilitating democratic participation in urban planning in light of the Brazilian legal framework, and on possible interactions between participatory urban planning and crowdsourcing. Collecting opinions, preferences, and impressions by a local community is a fundamental aspect of public participation in planning, seeking valuable information that can be used in geodesign. We demonstrate how online crowdsourcing techniques can be used to efficiently gather citizen views and opinions. A case study developed as part a course taught at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, called Collaborative Mapping and Citizen Participation, is presented. In the case study, students were asked to develop a volunteered geographic information (VGI) project to collect and analyze urban values of citizens of the São Luiz and São José neighborhoods in the Pampulha region in Belo Horizonte, and to show different approaches to using citizens as information providers. We demonstrate how simple mapping techniques can be instrumental and revealing citizen stakeholder preferences and values.

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17738-0_25