PARTICIPATORY SPATIAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Abstract

Different types of spatial knowledge (expert, sectoral, tacit and community) are strategic resources in urban planning and management. Participatory spatial knowledge management is a major method for eliciting various types of knowledge, providing a platform for knowledge integration and informing local action and public policy. Knowledge types linked to a specific geographical locality can be integrated through geographical information systems. Recent developments in geographical information and communication technology (geoICT) have extended the opportunities for participatory spatial knowledge production, use and exchange. However, data reliability of user-generated content, social exclusion due to dependence on technology and the interpretation and implications of digital maps are major concerns. The challenge is how to integrate and utilize multiple knowledge sources for improving urban management and governance. This paper integrates the literature on knowledge types and knowledge production processes with available geoICT tools for the production, use and exchange of knowledge sources and applies it to examples from Asia, Africa and Latin America. From this review, we provide a heuristic framework for assessing the extent to which participatory spatial knowledge management tools can be instrumental on several fronts. We argue that technological developments of knowledge production have not fully addressed important issues related to accountability, empowerment, control and use of knowledge. Moreover, these developments may foster social exclusion, which could detract from the benefits of participatory spatial knowledge management in the context of urban sustainability.

Keywords:

• knowledge types
• knowledge production
• participation
• spatial
• urban governance

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of the Research Programme ‘Urban Chances – City growth and the sustainability challenge. Comparing fast growing cities in growing economies’, funded under the 7th European Union-framework programme (Project no. 244828). The partners in this programme are the European Association of Development Research and Training, Germany; Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands); French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France; School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), India; Cities for Life Forum (FORO), Peru; Centro Brasileiro de Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), Brazil; Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), Norway; and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. For more information on the research programme, see http://www.chance2sustain.eu/. We thank Bas van Heur and the reviewers for their useful comments and Sally Wyatt and her team for making this special issue possible.

Notes

According to the work of participatory 3-D modelling, spatial knowledge develops in humans through three progressive stages including landmark knowledge, route knowledge and survey knowledge (Iapad 2011).

SDCEA represents 14 civil society organizations in South Durban, which include community organizations, for example, the Merebank Residents’ Association, religious groups and womens’ groups and has a founding constitution framed within a social and environmental justice framework.

Ecoserve, a company hired by the city to collect air pollution data, provided SDCEA with the ambient air monitoring data.

Current layers are roads, administrative boundaries, Census 2001 data by wards and major public facilities, stratum documenting slum locations, slum evictions, public toilets, and public investments such as flyovers, expressway and bridges (investments, expected duration, delays, etc.). Spatial information about environmentally sensitive areas, metro and bus lines, garbage dumping sites (approved and illegal), trees at the neighbourhood level, water bodies, tanks and reservoirs (including encroached ones since the 1950s) is in the making and planned to be added.

There is no map of the Greater Chennai bus network, not even in paper format.

The mobile mapping technology will apply authorizing instant (real-time mapping) diffusion online with the geo-localization of updates about new services, accidents, crimes, sitting contestations, pollutions, etc.