PEOPLE AS PLANNERS

In my ideal world of urban development and governance, urban planners would not exist. In this ideal world, perfect fluidity of of information, easy-to-use planning tools, and a transparent an d balanced political system would give everyone an equal voice without bogging down the system. This would eliminate any need for the "expert" planner who has power over them through knowledge, access to data/technical tools, or planning/design skills. I know it's a highly idealistic extreme vision, but I didn't get into planning not to chase down ideals, even if they spell the demise of my career. Recent developments point toward an early, happy retirement for me: census data is distributed freely and easily online, Google Earth freely provides topographic data and satellite imagery for the whole world, Sketch-Up brings the ability to design 3-d models of houses and entire cities with free technology easy enough for a 12-year old to use.

The Open Planning Project is one force that is taking ever-greater strides toward empowering civil society with software for improved participatory planning and urban policy creation. Under the umbrella of The Open Planning Project are the Streetsblog Network and Streetfilms websites, their Livable City education projects, the Uncivil Servants site. Even more revolutionary, perhaps are the possibilities that their GeoServer and OpenGeo open-source geo-spatial mapping/planning tools create. Currently geo-spatial data mapping is an incredibly powerful technology used for planning analysis and transportation modeling. However, these proprietary applications are almost completely closed to citizens due to the huge expense of the software and the training needed to run the systems. As a result, cities pay software companies and consultants huge sums to use these tools. Also, citizens do not have access to technology appropriate for challenging the analysis of experts.

However, the GeoServer is a open-source software server written in Java that allows users to share and edit geo-spatial data online – kind of like the Wikipedia edition of ESRI’s ArcGIS. OpenGeo is a non-profit social enterprise that offers consulting and support services around best of breed, open source, geospatial software, especially in building large transportation models for cities. The open-source software, which can be tailored for a city to use in transportation demand and capacity forecasting, will also be significantly cheaper than the proprietary models and private sector consultants many currently use. Portland is already employing the software and according to this Wired article, San Francisco’s MUNI may follow suit soon.

These projects will democratize the planning process, providing access to planning tools for little or no cost to cities and citizens. The end result can only be stronger, more democratic urban analysis, reduced municipal budgets, and better cities. The Open Planning Project is run and largely funded by Mark Gorton, founder of the Lime Wire, the most popular file-sharing application in the world in 2007, for the open-source gnutella network.