Engaging the Wisdom of Crowds and Public Judgment for Land Use Planning using Public Participation GIS (PPGIS)

More effective collaboration is a recurring theme to improve public participation in planning. But collaborative processes are constrained by the number of people that can participate, limiting the diversity and independence of planning participants resulting in suboptimal planning outcomes. This article argues that crowd sourcing and public judgment using public participation GIS (PPGIS) can result in better planning outcomes. The wisdom of crowds refers to a phenomenon where collective opinion generates superior solutions to a problem than can be obtained by any individual in the group; public judgment refers to high quality public opinion that is firm, consistent, and mindful of consequences. Public participation GIS (PPGIS) is a means to operationalize and translate the wisdom of crowds and public judgment into spatially explicit information for land use decisions. This article presents the conditions for engaging crowd wisdom and public judgment using PPGIS to collect spatially explicit planning information, followed by examples that illustrate the benefits. Technology exists to expand the use of PPGIS for planning but there is resistance from influential segments of society that don’t trust the wisdom of crowds. Innovators within planning practice are encouraged to provide opportunities to test and evaluate crowd-sourced planning solutions.

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