Open City: Applying Participatory Planning Theory to Open Data Initiatives

Abstract

Open data initiatives are nearly a decade old and are purported to foster government transparency, public accessibility, and civic engagement; the open data portal is the material expression of these initiatives and is the object of study for my thesis. My hypothesis is that civic engagement is a highly cited goal but is rarely a feature on portals. I include a review of transparency and accessibility as points of comparison to engagement through a content analysis of 68 municipal open data portals. The resultant findings confirm this hypothesis. Subsequently, I discuss the existing limitations and imagine ways planning theory and planners can improve open data as a forum for participation.