Online tools for public participation

An interactive Web-based survey tool that was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to advance a community planning process by increasing the complexity and the coverage area of the interactive map.

Abstract

This paper describes an interactive Web-based survey tool that was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago to advance a community planning process. The team used a process taken from the work of Jack Nasar (1998) that involves surveying residents to create an "evaluative image" of the community that could guide future design and development. While Nasar's original method used a phone survey, UIC researchers developed a Web site through which participants interacted with a map that was linked through a server to a GIS program. This project builds upon an earlier version of the survey by increasing the complexity and the coverage area of the interactive map (Al-Kodmany, 2000).