Application of social media in a regional design competition: a case study in the Netherlands

Many scholars argue for significant stakeholder involvement in landscape planning and design1 (for instance STEINITZ, 2012; BOOHER & INNES, 2002; CRAIG, 1998). Facilitating public engagement can be a challenging task, which involves the sharing of information, enabling citizens to form opinions, the exchange of opinions, and community building to create trust and acceptance (MACINTOSH, 2008). When applying traditional methods for participation – such as participation meetings and workshops – accessibility and inclusiveness of the process can be problematic due to boundaries in time and space. Web-based methods offer participants the opportunity to engage without being physically present, at a time and place that suits them, and anonymously if necessary (BRABHAM, 2009; MACINTOSH, 2008; VAN LAMMEREN ET AL., 2007). Moreover, new technologies allow interactions with the public at relatively low cost and high levels of efficiency (MACINTOSH, 2008; KAPLAN & HAENLEIN, 2009; BRABHAM, 2009, KINGSTON ET AL., 2000). Several publications explore the potential use of web based technologies to enhance public involvement in spatial planning and design, for instance in the form of online visualization tools (VERVOORT ET AL, 2010; SHEN, 2009), serious games (POPLIN, 2012), so-called argumentation maps (RINNER ET AL., 2008) and crowdsourcing (JEANSSON ET AL., 2012, LIGTENBERG & VAN LAMMEREN, 2012; HAMMON & HIPPNER, 2012; BRABHAM, 2009); all advocating further development of such technologies to enable online participation and collaboration in planning and design. The extent to which existing platforms, such as social networking sites of MySpace and Facebook, can support participation and collaboration is rather underestimated in planning and design literature and practice. As we are witnessing increased use of social media in society – and the impact of social media on society – their use as a means to enable citizen participation and collaboration needs to be explored. In this paper, we analyse the role of social media in the Eo Wijers regional design competition in the Netherlands, which provides examples of the use of social media from the perspective of integrated design/ planning teams. We studied A) which social media the teams proposed and applied in the competition entries and B) the level of interaction with the public that the teams aimed for.