Voulgaris, CaroleMyros, Kayla2023-05-1820232023-05-172023-05Myros, Kayla. 2023. Open City: Applying Participatory Planning Theory to Open Data Initiatives. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design.30521564https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37375212Open 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.application/pdfenUrban planningThesis or Dissertation2023-05-18