Legal and Organizational Framework for the use of Geoweb Methods for Public Participation in Spatial Planning in Poland: Experiences, Opinions and Challenges

Case studies analysis was conducted in connection with pilot implementations of geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion in the City of Łódź and Poznań Agglomeration (Poznań, Swarzędz and Rokietnica). The case study method has been chosen as a method of empirically investigating current processes of public participation in spatial planning in Poland. This investigation has been framed by considering the influence of legal and organizational aspects that can either permit or detract from the use of Geoweb methods (Robson 1993, Yin 2003). The aim of the conducted case studies was to understand and explain the potential and actual benefits of geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion use in the planning processes. Such research design represents the explanatory type of case study according to Yin (2003). The examples examined in the paper refer to the planning processes related to the procedure of local spatial development plans preparation resulting from the legal act on Spatial Planning and Management (2003). Table 1 presents the characteristics of case studies.

The listed above case studies had been carried out during the period of three years between 2014 and 2017 and involved four implementations of geo-questionnaire and two of geo-discussion. All of the cases represented a top-down approach to public consultations, in which local authorities and urban planners are directly responsible for the preparation of local spatial development plans and where it is up to them to initiate/organize public participation in the planning process (Talen 2000, Sieber 2006).

The total number of 16 interviews were conducted in the second half of 2015 as part of the selection of pilot implementations of geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion within the project ‘Geoportal supporting public participation in spatial planning’ funded by the grant from the National Center for Research and Development within the Applied Research Programme. The interviews were conducted prior to implementing the methods. The respondents represented local authorities (2), representatives of local planning agencies (3, urban planners and other specialists responsible for spatial planning with different educational background) and employees from other departments at City/Municipal Hall (11). The interview questions addressed the agencies’ interest in and openness towards the use of geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion. Respondents were asked the same questions (semi-structured interview), during the 1-hour long meetings. Respondents were asked for: –

what features (functions) should a public consultation tool have in order to meet their expectations and be useful in their work,

Spatial planning and public involvement in spatial planning processes in Poland are regulated by law. In order to present the legal determinants for the possibility of using Geoweb methods in spatial planning, the document of Spatial Planning and Management act of 2003 was analyzed with focus on regulations pertinent to public participation. To correctly interpret the provisions of the mentioned legal acts, the interpretations of the act as well as judicial decisions concerning planning processes in Poland were also investigated.

Geoweb methods facilitating public involvement in spatial planning are an example of non-statutory methods that can increase participation in planning processes in Poland. By getting involved in the pilot implementations the authors were looking for opportunities to integrate these non-statutory methods of public consultations with the statutory procedure of developing local spatial development plan.

The process of spatial planning in Poland is defined by the Act of 27 March 2003 on Spatial Planning and Management that distinguishes three hierarchical levels of spatial planning in Poland. The planning levels correspond to government levels in Poland excluding the subregional level of county, which has limited spatial planning competencies. The three levels of spatial planning in Poland include: local, regional and national (Fig. 1). Despite the importance of all three levels the authors focused on the local (municipal) level, at which the use of geo-questionnaire method has been examined.

Fig. 1

At the time of this writing, the geo-questionnaire method has been applied only at a local level in the preparation of local spatial development plan – the local legal act whose stipulations are derived from a statutory document called “a study of conditions and directions of spatial development”, usually prepared by a local planning agency in consultation with various stakeholders. The competences of municipalities in terms of spatial planning are defined as the planning authority (władztwo planistyczne in Polish), which means the exclusive right of decision on spatial development of the municipality (Niewiadomski 2002, Parysek 2007).

The planning procedure at the local level has been defined in detail in the Act on Planning and Spatial Management, both for local spatial development plans and for the studies of conditions and directions of spatial development for municipalities. Figure 2 presents the procedure for the preparation of local spatial development plan, which is similar to the procedure used during the preparation of spatial development study for municipality.

Fig. 2

The constitution of the Republic of Poland (Act of 2 April 1997) provides legal bases for functioning of local governments and their competences detailed in the Local Government Act of 1990, indicating spatial planning as the municipality’s own task. The spatial planning should be in line with separate legal regulations concerning the protection of environment, protection of agricultural and forest lands, protection of monuments, management of water, construction processes, special purpose investments (roads, harbours, airports, etc.) as well as future property management (Radeberg-Skorzysko 2016).

Commonly, in democratic societies public participation in planning and local decision making is legally regulated (Siemiński 2014). This includes the right to vote, organize referenda, and to create citizen advisory bodies. According to one of the first Polish definitions of public participation in spatial planning given by Wiench (acc. to Siemiński 2014), it is a legal action of individuals and social groups in order to influence the determination of spatial development plan. Public participation in Poland is a relatively young phenomenon, mostly present in the process of urban planning and regulated by the Act of 27 March 2003 on Spatial Planning and Management.

The primary avenue for public participation in spatial planning, in its statutory form resulting from the Act of 27 March 2003, is the possibility to submit proposals and comments to local spatial development plan and the study of spatial planning conditions and directions at a certain time of the planning procedure (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3

Despite the statutory possibility of the participation of all interested parties in the planning procedure, according to the law, private land owner interests trump public interests, which in effect may render any input from the participating public irrelevant at the stage of decision making (Zachariasz 2014). However, the legal basis determining the form of public participation in public consultation accompanying spatial planning does not limit the possibility of using additional non-statutory methods, often regulated by a local law, obligating local authorities to apply them in matters related to public interest.

Geo-questionnaire is an online questionnaire augmented with functionality of an online map (Jankowski et al. 2016). Respondents can answer the questions, among the others, by drawing geographic objects (points, lines and polygons) on a basemap provided by the designer of the questionnaire (Fig. 4). The objects can represent, for example, locations of specific problems in space, suggestions of future developments or any other phenomenon located in the geographic space. The data obtained with the questionnaire is then processed by the software and stored in a GIS database, which allows further analysis.

Fig. 4

Geo-questionnaire shares several characteristics with traditional (PAPI – Paper & Pen Personal Interview) questionnaires. One of the most important is that it is unidirectional, which means that the flow of information is directed generally from the respondent to the recipient, who most commonly would also be the designer and organiser of the survey. The other characteristic is that of independence of answers from each other – each respondent is presented with the same questions throughout the survey and cannot see the answers of other respondents. This prevents the phenomenon of feedback loop that could lead to the so called snowball effect, under which initial answers could channel further discussion and therefore have excessive influence on the survey outcome.

The abovementioned characteristics determine the range of possible uses of geo-questionnaire in spatial planning. The most common uses involve those where data recipient (usually a sponsor or organizer of geo-questionnaire) wants either to obtain respondents’ local knowledge or elicit their preferences towards the area in question. In a typical setting, both of those situations take place at the very beginning of the planning process, during the strategic diagnosis of the area or the early initiation of the planning, which correspond to phase I in Fig. 5. The geo-questionnaire can also be used to collect early proposals for the considered area, which roughly correspond to the phase of collecting motions to the plan in the statutory procedure.

Fig. 5

One other important characteristic of geo-questionnaire is its potential to generate quantitative data. Since all respondents answer the same set of questions, the obtained data can be analysed with the use of quantitative methods, including the measures of spatial autocorrelation and cluster analysis. The digital form of the questionnaire and automatic storage in an electronic database allows for the collection and analysis of relatively large numbers of questionnaires (compared to the time-consuming digitalisation of PAPI questionnaires).

It is important to note, that all of the mentioned uses share a common feature of unidirectional flow of relatively big volumes of structured information (knowledge of the current state of area under plan consideration, preferences, proposals) from respondents to the recipients. This characteristic differentiates qeo-questionnaire from geo-discussion.

In the analyzed case studies, geo-questionnaire was used at the stages of early initiation and collecting proposals (see Fig. 5). In each example, the implementation of geo-questionnaire was included in the processes of public consultations led by the researchers in cooperation with local governments. Local authorities and urban planners participated in the preparation and implementation phases. They were also the main recipients of data collected during public consultations.

In the case of Andrzejów (district of Łódź), the geo-questionnaire was designed before any formal decisions were made on the starting of planning procedure. After the official initiation of the planning process, the geo-questionnaire was used not only to carry out a diagnosis of the area in question, but also to help the planners decide about the priority of different parts of the plan. The use of geo-questionnaire resulted in the identification of guidelines for further planning activities in the subsequent stages of the planning procedure, most importantly during drafting of the local spatial development plan.

Similarly, in Kobylnica’s example the tool was used to explore public expectations towards the change of land use directions for the local air-glider airfield. The aim of that implementation was to obtain the opinion of local inhabitants on the desired directions of redevelopment of the former sports airfield. The commune authorities adopted a position in the negotiations with current and future owners of that area on the basis of the diagnosis of inhabitants’ opinion.

Two other uses of geo-questionnaire in spatial planning considered in this paper, i.e. Park Kasprowicza (Jankowski et al. 2016) and New Centre of Rokietnica, took place at the phase of collecting motions and proposals. This coincided with the collection of motions in statutory process, organized in the form of a public meeting, and can be seen as a way to extend the official statutory procedure with a Geoweb method.

Geo-discussion is an online forum for opinions augmented with functionality of an online map. The participants can familiarise themselves with the interactive material (see Fig. 6) provided by the organisers of the discussion (e.g. a project of a local land-use plan) and react to it publicly. The range of possible reactions contains among the others: expressing support or disapproval for a specific part of the project; commenting on the content; sharing the content in social media or replying to other participants’ comments. According to a chosen set-up of geo-discussion, the participants can either relate to the pre-defined geographical objects (e.g. subdivisions of the designed plan) or digitize their own objects (points, lines or polygons) on the provided basemap. Similarly as with the case of geo-questionnaire, the data is then processed and stored in an online GIS database.

Fig. 6

Geo-discussion shares some of its characteristics with online forums or social media; the participants have a broad range of tools available to allow mutual interactions that can facilitate exchanging information, finding commonalities and differences of opinion. The introduction of personal accounts and nicknames bears another similarity to the today’s social media – this allows the tool to notify participants about a new activity in the discussion, which induces further exchange of opinions.

It is important to note that not only members of the public can participate in geo-discussion. Personal and active participation of the plan’s designer(s) or the representatives of local authority can lead not only to acquiring new knowledge and collecting motions, but also to enhancing communication between the authorities and citizens. The features of geo-discussion allow citizens to actively assist in creation of spatial development plans and other projects connected with urban design. However, another, next to civic engagement, crucial matter is how local authorities will take advantage from the knowledge obtained from inhabitants during public consultations.

One of the most important characteristic of qeo-discussion is that the users (participants) not only see the inputs of their peers, but also are encouraged to interact with each other. Therefore, individual position statements/postulates/answers are not independent from each other and the communication is generally multidirectional. This, on the one hand, constitutes an opportunity for different parties to exchange their opinions and negotiate possible solutions. Also, the plan designer can use the features of geo-discussion to deepen the understanding of users’ preferences.

On the other hand, the bi-directional character of geo-discussion can complicate the analysis of collected data, since the final discussion content might be influenced by early participant inputs and comments generally lack the structure typical to answers in a questionnaire. Consequently, geo-discussion inputs should be treated qualitatively, since the data can not be easily aggregated. Another issue affecting the content obtained during geo-discussion is the effective involvement of discussion moderator, whose role is not only managing the discussion and explaining technical content but also mediation in case of conflicts between stakeholders. In contrast to geo-questionnaire, the common characteristic of the uses of geo-discussion is the focus on interaction and bidirectional exchange of information. The relatively free form of opinion exchange induces mutual communication that can support collaborative decision-making, albeit conditioned by a number of other factors. As noted by Sieber (2006), broader discussion and communication as well as consensus building are the expected results of PPGIS. The important aspect of the discussion on spatial development plans (and other ideas connected with space) enabled by geo-discussion is the awareness of online agora specifics (Bishop 2006). The engagement of participants, especially representing groups of interests, can be easily increased with the use of social media. That said, digital divide is still an important barrier that should be considered in the development of cyber democracy (Hacker, van Dijk 2000). Therefore, to get useful results from the use of online methods such as geo-discussion, it is necessary to properly plan public consultations by carefully considering convening factors and constraints, process flow, and expected outcomes (Kain, Söderberg 2008, Cuppen 2012).

The abovementioned characteristics confine the use of geo-discussion to situations, in which the organisers either wish to collect feedback on the working version of document (e.g. a local plan) or try to foster the process of building a consensus around the plan. Since both situations require a draft proposal of the plan, geo-discussion lends itself to be used primarily in later phases of statutory planning procedure in Poland (see: phase III in Fig. 7).

Fig. 7

In the discussed case studies, geo-discussion was used at the stage of elaborating the first draft of plan, just before it undergoes mandatory reviewing and agreeing with external bodies. The aim of both uses was to present the draft plan to the public and to collect feedback on it. As the statutory procedure does not require to collect any input from citizens at this stage, the input could be used informally to alter the content of plans and would not require an official response from the authority (required in case of statutory motions and comments).

Based on the interviews conducted to identify the needs of potential geo-questionnaire and geo-discussion users, the following benefits of their use in spatial planning were identified: –

the inclusion of larger group of people in a consultation process,

In addition, the interviewees pointed out that the residents’ proposals and questions could be answered after the consultation by the representatives of other units of the city, which is not possible during traditional meetings unless those representatives are present at the meetings. Aside from the advantages, the potential constraints and threats to the use of Geoweb methods mentioned by the interview respondents included an overrepresentation of younger people participating in public consultations who are comfortable with mobile and Internet tools or technical issues related to the obsolescence of participants’ communication tools. The respondents mentioned also potential additional costs caused by the use and configuration of application or the greater engagement of planning professionals working outside the office hours. Other potential threats arise from incomplete participant knowledge causing varying levels of details in discussion contributions and the difficulty keeping the discussion focused on the topic of consultation.

According to all interviewees, the Geoweb methods, in order to measure up to expectations and to be fully useful for planners, should be characterized by intuition and simplicity of their use.