Steve Curwell

Citizens' expectations of information cities: implications for urban planning and design.

The European Union has made the development of a vibrant knowledge-based economy a key policy objective, and increasingly national and local governments worldwide are seeking to harness information and communication technologies to provide government services more effectively and for the benefit of their citizenry. The paper reports on the first phase of the ongoing European Union IntelCities integrated project that seeks to integrate electronic governance of cities and urban planning. The background to the project in terms of the e-Europe Action Plan is explored and the outcome of surveys of user needs and requirements carried out in the cities of Marseilles (France), Siena and Rome (Italy), Helsinki (Finland), Leicester and Manchester (UK), and Dresden and Berlin (Germany) are explained. The outcomes identify a range of implications for digital or electronic planning in terms of increasing the efficiency in e-urban planning and the need to develop digital methodologies for widening public participation. Thus, the importance of e-skills development in new forms of e-planning for planners, developers and citizens is highlighted and shown to be important for achieving a wider e-enabled sustainable knowledge society.

Urban information integration for advanced e-Planning in Europe

Urban planning is a complex task requiring multidimensional urban information (spatial, social, economic, etc.). The need for assistance in performing urban planning tasks has led to the rapid development of urban information systems, especially “e-Planning” systems, with the support of government policy and emerging information and communication technologies (ICT). In order to enhance the capability of e-Planning and to facilitate 3D visualization and rich analysis of complex city problems, it is very important to allow information from the various sources to be shared and integrated. This paper focuses on technical approaches for multidimensional information integration, especially spatial information integration. In particular it describes the Building Data Integration System (BDIS), developed as part of the IntelCities project, which demonstrates the type of multidimensional systems that are likely to be used in future urban information systems. Functionally, the BDIS demonstrates the feasibility of systems to support the multinational collaboration of construction professionals in the procurement and renovation of buildings. For such systems to be accepted in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe, they need to be developed with regard to current planning information structures and standards in the UK and Europe which are reviewed in this paper. The achievements and further development of multidimensional information integration through the use of innovative urban data modelling techniques are discussed.

Bequest: The framework and directory of assessment methods

This paper has outlined the areas of the Environment and Climate Programme (Economic and Social Aspects of Human Settlement) the BEQUEST project addresses. It has also examined the framework for analysis the project sets out for a common understanding of SUD and the assessment methods currently made use of by planners, architects, engineers and surveyors to build environmental capacity. The paper has done this by:•fore-grounding the question of urban development and representing the process of urbanisation as a life cycle of inter-related activities;•agreeing the sustainable development issues underlying the urban process;•identifying the environmental, economic and social structure, spatial level and time scales of sustainable urban development.

Intelligent cities

This paper will report on the main outcomes of the INTELCITIES Intelligent Cities integrated project (IST no. 507860), which commenced in January 2004.