Avoiding the planning support system pitfalls? What smart governance can learn from the planning support system implementation gap

Abstract

The implementation of smart governance in government policies and practices is criticised for its dominant focus on technology investments, which leads to a rather technocratic and corporate way of ‘smartly’ governing cities and less consideration of actual user needs. To help prevent a mismatch between the demand for and the supply of technology, this paper explores what smart governance can learn from efforts in debates on planning support systems to close the ‘PSS implementation gap’. This gap refers to a long-standing discrepancy between the availability of planning support systems (supply) and the time-bound support needs of planning practice (demand). By exploring both the academic field of smart governance and the debates on the planning support system implementation gap, this paper contributes to the further development of smart governance by learning from the experiences in the planning support system debates. Two particular lessons are distilled: (1) for technology to be of added value to practice, it should be attuned to the wishes and capabilities of the intended users and to the specifics of the tasks to be accomplished, given the particularities of the context in which the technology is applied; and (2) closing the planning support system implementation gap reveals that knowledge on the context specificities is of utmost importance and will also be of importance to the smart governance developments. In conclusion, smart governance can and should become more aware of the role of contextual factors in collaboration with users and urban issues. This is expected to shift the emphasis from today’s technology-focused, supply-driven smart governance development, to a socio-technical, application-pulled and demand-driven smart governance development.

The Effects of Contextual Factors on PSS Usefulness: an International Questionnaire Survey

“…Finally, we hypothesized that "characteristics of the urban issue" have a significant influence on PSS usefulness. Some studies highlight that the attributes of the urban issue help judge the appropriateness of the supportive role (Jiang et al 2020c;Pelzer et al 2015;Vonk and Ligtenberg 2010), and thus their importance should be given more attention. However, the estimate of the indicator "types of urban problems" was not found to be as significant due to the broader multiple and multidimensional aspects of context impact.…”

“…Studies also tend to emphasize the importance of improving PSS functionalities and usability in optimizing PSS usefulness Silva et al 2017;Pelzer 2017). Thus, there has been much argument that PSS validity and potential would benefit from being employed in a context-rich, real-world research scenario, as well as much lobbying for such employment (Jiang et al 2020a(Jiang et al , 2020cLuque-Martín and Pfeffer 2020;McEvoy et al 2019;Zhang et al 2019;Vonk and Geertman 2008), since it would provide PSS with "a structure [to] constructively develop a coherent and comprehensive body of knowledge" (te Brömmelstroet 2013: 306). In the present study, we conducted a survey to determine the multidimensional impact of contextual factors on the usefulness of PSS in smart city practices.…”

“…Zhang et al (2019) point out that digital literacy has prevented many ordinary people from engaging in web-based participatory planning. As Jiang et al (2020c), Geertman (2017Geertman ( , 2006, and te Brömmelstroet (2010) argue, what can be achieved with a PSS, and the meaning of those achievements, largely depend on how the planning context is treated.…”

Perencanaan Pengembangan Smart City: Sebuah Kajian Pustaka

“…Untuk klaster satu yang berkaitan dengan smart city, maka artikel yang memiliki relevansi yang dapat dijadikan sebagai acuan misalnya seperti yang dituliskan oleh H. Jiang, S. Geertman, and P. Witte [6] yang menjelaskan bahwasanya dalam penerapan tata kelola smart city harus mempertimbangkan kebutuhan pengguna yang sebenarnya, hal tersebut agar mencegah ketidaksesuaian antara permintaan dan teknologi yang sudah disediakan. Sejatinya konsep smart city digagas untuk memperbaiki kinerja dari pemerintahan, yang dimana secara garis besar nya adalah untuk menciptakan kesejahteraan masyarakat.…”

Tightly Coupling Input Output Economics with Spatio-Temporal Land Use in a Dynamic Planning Support System Framework

“…Ideally, such PSSs should be flexible and responsive to changing environments, and continuously integrate updated data [9]. Such flexible and dynamic PSSs would reflect the spatial characteristics of a location (e.g., climate, population trend, economic situation) not only at present but also in the future, and require developers to gear their systems to the interests and capabilities of their end-users [14]. To accomplish this, the user interface should be straightforward and simple, so the tool can be democratically engaged by those without professional knowledge of spatial analysis [9].…”