Public Involvement in Taking Legislative Action as to the Spatial Development of the Tourist Sector in Greece—The “OpenGov” Platform Experience

Abstract

By the Aarhus Convention (1998) it is recognized the right of citizens to get access to and influence decision-making in respect to issues affecting the state of the environment. More specifically, in Article 8 it is stated that public authorities are forced to engage public participation when preparing regulations or legally binding rules that have a significant environmental impact. Towards this end, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and their applications have considerably expanded the potential of planners and decision makers to interact with stakeholders and the public and engage them in participatory processes through ICTs-enabled platforms. The focus of the present paper is on the context of public consultation in taking legislative action as to the spatial development of the tourist sector in Greece. It consists of three parts: the first part, where the context of engaging the public in governmental decision-making in Greece is discussed, following the Open Government Partnership (OGP) initiative; the second part, presenting the steps of the "OpenGov" online platform, designed for gathering public knowledge to further improve legislative efforts and policy; and the third part, elaborating on the experience gained by the use of the "OpenGov" platform for decision-making on the spatial development of the tourist sector in Greece.

Evaluating the public acceptance of sustainable mobility interventions responding to Covid-19: The case of the Great Walk of Athens and the importance of citizen engagement

“…SUMPs' implementation is mainly related to community engagement ( Arsenio et al, 2016 ; Banister, 2008 ; Le Pira et al, 2020 ; Okraszewska et al, 2018 ), which should not be limited to opinion-raising on social consensus related to interventions but it could be extended to other activities, like data collection ( Somarakis & Stratigea, 2014 ). Indeed, such a philosophy is now widespread across Europe ( Bakogiannis et al, 2021 ), as new technologies urged such techniques to be applied.…”

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to Analyze the Urban Environment

“…This term was proposed by Di-AnnEisnor, during the decade of 2000 (Haklay, et.al., 2008;Stamatopoulou, 2013), in order to describe a process in which people feel free to participate in data gathering processes, apart from traditional consultations (Somarakis and Stratigea, 2014). Also, the needs for increased information in fields like cadastre and land information management system as well as the need for combined information regarding space and time, resulted in the development of multidimensional models, beyond the two dimensions (Ioannidis, et.al., 2000;Dimopoulou, 2015;Doulamis, et.al., 2015 a;Doulamis, et.al., 2015 b).…”

A strategic policy scenario analysis framework for the sustainable tourist development of peripheral small island areas – the case of Lefkada-Greece Island

“…This tourist development pattern has in turn resulted in an increasing pressure, exerted on the natural, cultural and social resources of certain regions; and a limited exploitation of resources of other regions, contributing, among others, to the increase of regional inequalities [29,30].…”