Eric Gordon

Immersive Planning: A Conceptual Model for Designing Public Participation with New Technologies

Public participation is an important part of the urban planning process. However, too often the goals of this participation are not clearly articulated and, as a result, the platforms for participation created with digital technologies are often poorly designed or simply lack clarity. Immersive planning is a conceptual model with which to conceive the process of public participation that focuses on the depth and breadth of user experience. Borrowing from literature on games and virtual environments, we frame recent, technologically aided approaches to public participation within three categories of immersion: challenge-based, sensory, and imaginative. Geographic information systems, computer aided design, planning support systems, virtual environments, and digital games are all methods of obtaining user immersion in one or a combination of these categories. In this paper we provide a review of the foundational literature and influential projects in this area, and by framing them within the model of immersive planning seek to connect these efforts to provide a clearer path forward in employing new technologies for public participation.

Digital Civics: Citizen Empowerment With and Through Technology

The current economic crisis has thrown the relationship between citizens, communities and the state into sharp relief. Digital Civics is an emerging cross-disciplinary area of research that seeking to understand the role that digital technologies can play in supporting relational models of service provision, organization and citizen empowerment. In particular, how digital technologies can scaffold a move from transactional to relational service models, and the potential of such models to reconfigure power relations between citizens, communities and the state. Through examples of Digital Civics systems. that question conventional models of service provision, this SIG aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to critically discuss and explore the theoretical underpinnings, development and deployment of digital tools, platforms and processes within a Digital Civics research agenda.

Playing with empathy: digital role-playing games in public meetings

Digital role-playing games can be an effective tool for augmenting deliberation in a community planning process. We study the implementation of a game called Participatory Chinatown---a 3D, multiplayer game designed to be played in the shared physical space of a master planning meeting in Bostons Chinatown neighborhood. This research examines how role-play can affect the way people understand local issues and engage with their community. It also points to the challenges of extending player empathy from the magic circle of gameplay to the larger context of a community meeting. It suggests that emotional engagement with character and or space does not easily translate into a rational decision-making process. The authors make suggestions for future research that might address this challenge.

MAPPING DIGITAL NETWORKS From cyberspace to Google

This paper examines how the metaphor of mapping has been formative in the publics apprehension of Internet technologies since the early 1990s. It explores how cyberspace was represented as a map in popular films and novels as well as by popular commentators and thought leaders. Jean Baudrillards contention that the ‘map precedes the territory’ is indicative of a view of cyberspace or virtual reality that was contained and separate from lived experience. But with the introduction of Web 2.0 technologies, this began to change. Frederic Jamesons conception of the cognitive map better describes how users have come to order and plot their lives into dynamic interfaces. Google Maps and the myriad of applications that followed brought the physical location of users and data into clear view. While location has promised tremendous freedoms for users, this paper questions whether or not those freedoms are outside the significant constraints of the consumer network.

Civic media art and practice: toward a pedagogy for civic design

Community + Culture features practitioner perspectives on designing technologies for and with communities. We highlight compelling projects and provocative points of view that speak to both community technology practice and the interaction design field as a whole. --- Christopher A. Le Dantec, Editor