The above image shows a visualization application useful for story telling (linked to learn more resources) about community-based projects. There is a pressing need for innovative Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and new planning models/methods that can reconcile and integrate the activities of regional data providers, planners, managers, politicians and community groups in support of integrated decision-making for sustainable development. This is especially true for large binational metropolitan areas such as the San Diego-Tijuana metropolitan region and other fast growing twin cities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Long-term integrated planning in cities and regions is an increasingly complex task. The wide-ranging, sometimes conflicting, activities of the growing number of regional data providers, stakeholders, and decision makers are not easily reconciled or integrated at a regional scale. This is especially true for large binational metropolitan areas, which need to develop the capability to be treated as single systems composed of communicating networks of infrastructures. Integrated scenarios for foodsheds, watersheds, energy and emissions, material flows, and land use and development are starting to be researched.  Healthy and sustainable, community-based, Progressive Regionalism needs new modes of city-region governance and data visualization (i.e., of changes in land use and the built environment over time). 

The application in the image above can be viewed on-line at: http://regionalworkbench.org/education/colonias/10demayo_en.html

Brail, Richard K. and Richard E. Klosterman. 2001. Planning support systems : integrating geographic information systems, models, and visualization tools. Redlands, Calif.: ESRI Press.

Gurstein, Michael. 2000. Community informatics : enabling communities with information and communications technologies. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub.

Kwartler, Michael, Gianni Longo, and Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. 2008. Visioning and visualization : people, pixels, and plans. Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Marshall, Stewart, Wallace Taylor and Xing Huo Yu. 2004. Using community informatics to transform regions. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Pub.

Schön, Donald A., Bishwapriya Sanyal and William J. Mitchell. 1999. High technology and low-income communities : prospects for the positive use of advanced information technology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Swanstrom, Todd and Brian Banks. 2009. “Going Regional: Community-Based Regionalism, Transportation, and Local Hiring Agreements.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 28:355-367.

Tietenberg, tom and David Wheeler. 1998. “Empowering the community: Information strategies for pollution control.” in Frontiers of Environmental Economics. Airlie House, Virginia.

Walz, Ariane, Corina Lardelli, Heiko Behrendt, Adrienne Gret-Regamey, Corinne Lundstrom, Susanne Kytzia, and Peter Bebi. 2007. “Participatory scenario analysis for integrated regional modelling.” Landscape and Urban Planning 81:114-131.

World Health Organization and United Nations Environmental Programme. 2008. “Health environment : managing the linkages for sustainable development : a toolkit for decision-makers : synthesis report.”, Geneva, Switzerland.

Zimmerman, Rae and Thomas A. Horan. 2004. Digital infrastructures : enabling civil and environmental systems through information technology. London ; New York: Routledge.

Paths to Paradise: UCSD-TV series about planning in San Diego (based on Appleyard and Lynch (1974)

Temporary Paradise

Goals

• Create new means of information integration and visualization (i.e., the ability to veiw changes in land use and the built environment over time) that supports community-based progressive regionalism.
• Establish a new mode of communication among university, industry, government and community-based organizations seeking sustainable city-region development (i.e., integrated approaches to meeting social equity, economic, and environmental objectives).

Actions

• Build models (including solid versions that can be put on display for public use at community meetings, as well as on-line interactive versions for planning and decision support uses) that show regional land use, the built environment and ecosystems.
• Inspire/facilitate research requiring the integration of disciplines and spatial scales (drawing from the social, natural, and physical sciences as well as technology, art and the humanities).

Solutions

3D Regional Canvas of the Californias

By Keith Pezzoli on May 25, 2010 at 07:19 PM

Opportunities

No Opportunities have been added to this Challenge.

One of the greatest challenges planners face in promoting so-called “smart growth” and “sustainable development” (development that balances needs for environmental stewardship, economic efficiency, and equity) is the need to more effectively understand and manage the interconnections of state, regional and local land use decisions. For example, state and regional investments in highway construction increases the amount of impervious surfaces, thereby affecting the amount of storm water runoff and local water quality. At the same time, highway construction influences the direction of urban and rural growth patterns. Current land use practices fuel low-density urban sprawl by isolating employment locations, shopping and services, and housing locations from each other. The results are very costly, including increasing traffic congestion and commute times; air pollution; inefficient energy consumption and greater reliance on foreign oil; loss of open space and habitat; inequitable distribution of economic resources; and the loss of a sense of community. In view of these interlocking social, economic and environmental costs, there is an urgent need to “transition from poorly managed sprawl to land use planning practices that create and maintain efficient infrastructure, ensure close-knit neighborhoods and sense of community, and preserve natural systems” [Katz 2002]. A major challenge in moving forward on this front concerns participatory processes (ensuring that equity and social justice are front and center in planning for healty and sustainable communities).

Katz, P. 2002. New Tools for Community Design and Decision Making: An Overview. Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development, 2002.