How is mobile technology changing city planning? Developing a taxonomy for the future

The emergence of web technology creates tremendous opportunity to advance good government, through increased information, interaction with the public, and cost-effective, efficient means of conducting public transactions. Some have proposed that e-government tools have two major roles: (1) receptive and (2) interactive. We argue that there is a third role for planning and e-government technology – the transactive. To evaluate this, we survey public sector planning officials on their professional use of mobile technology. Results confirm the recent trends in increased smartphone use, but indicated that only a limited amount of this increased use is for work purposes. We find that there are still planners who not only do not rely on web technologies at all, within even desktop computer access. Furthermore, our results suggest that the current use of mobile technology appears to be less transactive than the literature suggests. This finding provides room for growth in these transactive and more dynamic exchanges, especially with the increasing prevalence of mobile devices. To assist in this, we provide a taxonomy to help define how mobile technology can change planning and local governance. Such a tool can provide a roadmap for increasing transactive exchanges between local government and citizens in the future.

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