Web Tools for Participation and Collaboration

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Web Tools for Participation and Collaboration in Planning

This is an evolving, edited database of Internet tools for collaboration and participation in urban policy and planning. The database includes resources for communicating by email, technology to create interactive websites that allow visitors to edit text or leave comments, online voting systems, and collaborative platforms for small groups, among others. The list is biased towards free or low-cost, flexible, and open-source websites or software. Where I include consultants or proprietary tools, they are particularly relevant to urban planning. This is very much a work in progress, and I am always interested in feedback, suggestions for additions, or corrections to the data. Contact me at rgoodspe at mit.edu.

My article on "Internet tools for e-democracy in urban planning" describes some of my thoughts about why and how these tools should be used, and includes links to organizations doing work in this area and interesting case studies. I'm aware of several similar websites, generally more broad than only web tools:

The Orton Family Foundaiton's Online Tool Exchange, a directory of the best "tools, resources, and organizations in community planning"
The Regional Plan Association "workshop" open directory of planning tools
Placematters' Smart Growth Tools containing "tools and processes for better community design and decision making"
The website ParticipateDB, under development by the consulting firm Intellitics.
The Choosing Visualization for Transportation website includes tools and research about participatory tools.
The International Association for Public Participation maintains this resources page and a public participation toolbox (PDF) of mostly offline practices.

A few notes on types: DIY refer to software that you can download and install on your own server for free. Often, hosted versions of these programs are provided for free or for a fee. Experimental tools are generally still under development, but included here because of their innovation or potential.