Information Technology and GIS for Urban, Rural Planning and Governance

History of urban planning

Urban planning is a structured process of forethought and conscious design of a section of land or layout. This looks like definition of urban planning in layman terms and definitely not a software project planning process! Early humans lived in nomadic way, relying on hunting and gathering the possessions to sustain. 8000 to 10000 thousand years ago this process improved with more domestication and permanent settlements. The first true urban settlement created approximately around 3000 B.C. in ancient town of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley.

There are two types of urban forms “Organic” and “Planned”. The planned and regular urban forms were generally created by the elite hierarchies of the society such as religious, political and military. In contrast, organic urban form is produced by a slow process of accretion, complex and irregular patterns of layout. In ancient times the urban city was created using two main features, the wall and citadel or fort. The wall was used to preserve or denote the boundary of the city. The citadel or forts used to have a layout to accommodate socio-political requirements of the society.

Today’s urban planning approach across the globe

Today urban planning is political, social and technical process covering use of land, design of the environment, Infrastructure, transportation, education, healthcare, entertainment and other socio economic necessities of human life.

These complex theories of planning and processes coupled with immense focus on environment has brought the importance of urban planning to the table. The policy makers of the societies now really need to think hard and take holistic approach to the urban planning and its implementation. The urban area or city or town of today is divided into three parts:

1. Inner city

2. Sub Urban Areas

3. Industrial city

The urban planning has two dimensions, one aspects and another planning, the aspects refers to aesthetics, safety & security, environmental factors, infrastructure, basic necessities of human life, decay, sustainability, operations and maintenance services. The planning refers to the holistic approach based on the aspects or goals of the urban or rural planning, such as rational, synoptic, participatory, incremental, mixed scanning, transactive, advocacy, bargaining, communicative. Let us look at some of the urban planning types:

Rational: Emphasized the improvement of the built environment based on key spatial factors. Examples of these factors include: exposure to direct sunlight, movement of vehicular traffic, standardized housing units, and proximity to green-space

Synoptic: IT has four central elements:

1.An enhanced emphasis on the specification of goals and targets;

2.An emphasis on quantitative analysis and predication of the environment;

3.A concern to identify and evaluate alternative policy options; and

4.The evaluation of means against ends

Participatory: An urban planning paradigm that emphasizes involving the entire community in the strategic and management processes

And many more planning approaches please refer to the following link in wiki for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning#Changes_to_the_planning_process

We will use the above information to identify the challenges of these processes and how Information technology and GIS can help address these challenges.

Challenges of urban, rural planning and governance

There are regional differences in urban and rural planning processes, but the core remains same that this planning process is actually an integration of multiple disciplines of science & technology, sociology, environment and economy. When we say integration there are many complexities to be understood, addressed between these disciplines and the stakeholders participating in the planning process.

Another area of concern is implementation and governance of the urban, rural plan created after such tedious and time consuming processes. There are many such challenges that this domain is facing today and is going through strategic metamorphosis such as being more democratic and transparent to the citizens of the area. Let us list down some of the key challenges of this domain:

·Impacts of Underlying trends: economic, social, religious on planning process

·The forces at work: globalization, technology advancements, lifestyle innovations

·The concerns about climate change

·Collaborative efforts among various disciplines of urban planning

·Lack of awareness and usage of right set of integrated tools and technology

·Lack of geospatial and business data to the required granularity and accuracy

The elaborated list of challenges could be many more but for scope of this paper, let us consider some of the above key challenges of this Industry

How IT and GIS can address these challenges?

Information Technology and GIS makes use of computer, software and data to help Urban and Rural planning stakeholders identify and visualize social, political, market trends, patterns, use simulations, 2D/3D visualizations, opportunities, threats which otherwise may not be possible with data on paper and in tabular formats. IT and GIS can make value addition to Urban and Rural planning in big way for making it better!

Let us deep dive into some of the challenges and how IT and GIS can help address these:

Underlying trends: economic, social, religious

Information technology and GIS solutions can be of help for research and analytics of existing socio-economic factors. Rural and Urban economic, social and religious information can be collected using various methods such as manual surveys, acquiring data from government agency and collecting data from social media may be big data!

The information/data can be used to build GIS enabled IT solutions to address this challenge. These solutions can be but not limited to one of the following:

·Population demographic analysis with AOI (Area of Interest) feature

·Trend analytics for these impacts using Big Data

·Advertising and Campaign Management for various urban, rural planning initiatives

·Consumer Services for contributing to planning process

·Decision Support System for Policy makers with latest geospatial and Big data

The forces at work: globalization, technology advancements, lifestyle innovations

The forces at work impact the urban aspects and planning process, such as globalization will emphasize on re-planning of economic aspects of the existing urban development plan. The technology advancements might emphasize on revision of infrastructure policies. Lifestyle innovations could lead to changes in the urban layout, public services and trade policies as well.

These challenges primarily highlight the lack of change management in the existing urban planning process. The urban planning needs to be robust and flexible to accommodate such forces impacting the plan.

The Big Data for these forces and geographic data can be used to develop GIS enabled IT solutions which can help the planners to analyze and visualize the impacts of these forces on the plan and planning process.

The list of GIS enabled solutions can be but not limited to the following:

·Realtime Decision Support Systems for Urban planning

·GIS enabled analytics for the forces at work

·Integration of existing systems from various disciplines to GIS platform

Collaborative efforts among various disciplines of urban planning

Usage of Information Technology and GIS can be used take holistic view of the Urban and Rural planning processes by addressing the areas for digitization and automation.

GIS enabled IT solutions will enhance the ability of stakeholders of urban planning to utilize the public information sharing platforms such as government portals at various levels; social media to collaborate is digital way. Add efficiencies to the planning process and implement various types of the urban planning processes simultaneously.

The list of GIS enabled solutions can be but not limited to the following:

·Advertising and Campaign Management for various urban, rural planning initiatives

·Portal for urban planners, stakeholders and citizens

….many more, sky should be the limit. This time rather than displaying any snap of product or solution, I have tried to create a concept with help of mind map, it can be called SUPGS: “Sustainable Urban Planning and Governance Systems”

Happy Reading! Please write to mukundh@geospatialit.in, mukundh2013@hotmail.co.in and mukundh2012@gmail.com for any queries and requirements.