This document discusses six forms of crowdsourcing that could be applied to urban planning: 1) Distributed data collection, 2) Soliciting design solutions, 3) Collective intelligence, 4) Peer production of public goods, 5) Collective Intelligence Genome, and 6) "Open Innovation" Technology. It notes that while these approaches have the potential to engage the public, they also have naïve views of government that could lead to libertarian ideals if not implemented carefully. New technologies should be considered as part of planning, but traditional institutions still need to be involved to ensure proper social and political outcomes.
1. Crowdsourcing Planning?
Robert Goodspeed
PhD Student
MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Delivered as a lighting talk at the Virginia Tech Social Media for
Planning Conference, April 19, 2011:
http://www.cpe.vt.edu/socialplan/
2.
3. Other
Presentation
Website
Facebook/Twi
tter
Published
Article
To What
Community
End? Forum
Meetings
Citizen Task
Force
N = 73
Survey Universe: City email list
Online Survey
Convenience Sample
Open House
Meeting-In-a-Box
9. The New Outsourcing?
Jeff Howe, “The Rise of Crowdsourcing,” Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/crowds.html
10. #1 Distributed data collection
“Volunteered geographic information”
Emergency response, vacant property tracking, invasive species, etc.
11. #2 Soliciting design solutions
Brabham, D. 2009. Crowdsourcing the Public Participation Process for Planning
Participation. Planning Theory 8: 3, 242-262.
12. #3 Collective intelligence
Mark Elliott PhD Dissertation: “Stigmergic Collaboration: A theoretical framework for
mass collaboration”
13. #4 Peer production of public goods
“Government as a
platform for greatness”
14. These have naïve conception of
government and power.
At their worst, they are a libertarian
pipe dream.
Let’s get institutional.
15. #5 Collective Intelligence Genome
What
Goal
Who
Hierarchy
Crowd
Why
Money
Love
Glory
How
Collaboration
Group Decision
Voting
Consensus
Averaging
Prediction Markets
Individual Decisions
MIT Center for Collective Intelligence
http://cci.mit.edu/
17. New models from disparate fields
present fruitful ideas.
Problem identification
Data collection
Ideas
Volunteers
Input for plans
18. Only by including new technologies
as a variable can we be open to
new social, political, and
institutional arrangements that
previously weren’t possible.
19. Thank You
Robert Goodspeed
PhD Student
MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
http://web.mit.edu/rgoodspe/www/
rgoodspe@mit.edu
Editor's Notes
Last fall I completed a research paper on social media in planning about a comprehensive planning process in Austin, Texas. As you see here I evaluated their offline and online approaches, including facebook, twitter, blogging, and others.
One of the most interesting outcomes was this diagram. It illustrates the pattern of participation for a survey of highly active participants. The bars represent the pairwise commonalities between the two only. The colors are just for fun. Basically, out of all of these activities most people went to the website. This seems to suggest the hypothesis they were then told about other opportunities, however the reverse causality is also interesting. Attended a public meeting and then went to a website. However, the key question I kept coming back to was what the purpose of all this participation was? Were we happy with the system that was emerging, or should we question what we wanted as well?
This is the central question: what models work and how might we be inspired by other experiments?That are flexible, effective, and get resultsWe can do a host of things previously difficult. Easily aggregate and rate ideas and preferences, collect data, mine contents of digital networks for views, and much more. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
Attendees to public meetings are not representative. Most seriously, the process silences new ideas, says “no,” and deadens community vitality.The question we ask ourselves with disappointing results: is this the best we can do?Others focus on deliberative or educational experiences divorced from a plan or policy contextOften limited to creating a vision. Is that all we want? Then get out of our way, let us write regulation and run the approval process?An unsatisfying scope for planning. Yet without an affirmative model for deeper engagement, it’s where we are.
Attendees to public meetings are not representative. Most seriously, the process silences new ideas, says “no,” and deadens community vitality.The question we ask ourselves with disappointing results: is this the best we can do?Others focus on deliberative or educational experiences divorced from a plan or policy contextOften limited to creating a vision. Is that all we want? Then get out of our way, let us write regulation and run the approval process?An unsatisfying scope for planning. Yet without an affirmative model for deeper engagement, it’s where we are.
Attendees to public meetings are not representative. Most seriously, the process silences new ideas, says “no,” and deadens community vitality.The question we ask ourselves with disappointing results: is this the best we can do?Others focus on deliberative or educational experiences divorced from a plan or policy contextOften limited to creating a vision. Is that all we want? Then get out of our way, let us write regulation and run the approval process?An unsatisfying scope for planning. Yet without an affirmative model for deeper engagement, it’s where we are.
Internet-enabled collaboration and communication arising new social practices.
“ … crowdsourcing represents the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential laborers.”-- Jeff Howe
GovSpigit enables government agencies to launch internal and/or external campaigns to collect new ideas from employees and/or citizens. Ideas advance through a structured process, customized for each agency, designed to make them actionable.
It’s our job to build these new frameworks for problem identification and solutions.What do we want? How do we get it? What is the role of social media?