Let Citizens Speak Up: Designing Intelligent Online Participation for Urban Planning

Urbanization and the transformation toward sustainability pose new challenges to governments, leading to an increase in citizen participation in urban planning. Due to the demand for scalability, urban participation is often conducted online. However, past projects showed that the asynchronous and impersonal exchange reduces the value of citizens’ submissions as inquiries are omitted. Thus, this study investigates how to design an IT artifact to support citizens in contributing to online participation in urban planning projects. To do so, we initiated a design science research project. We analyzed the literature to define issues, formulate meta-requirements, and derive design principles to develop and qualitatively evaluate an AI-based prototype that enables immediate responses to citizens considering their contributions. This study contributes to the field of information systems with prescriptive knowledge. Furthermore, this study can guide practitioners in citizen participation in urban planning in building and utilizing digital tools to support citizens in contributing to subsequent processes.