Social media as a tool for engagement in urban development : international perspective

Abstract

Cities are facing challenge to upgrade their enviroment and infrastructure in order to improve quality of life and satisfy citizens’ needs. The constant development demands novel approach of ‘smart’ urban design by integrating cutting edge technologies and engaging various participants into the urban development processes. European planning systems tend to shift towards more strategic spatial planning approach, and, hence, require more proactive, up-to-date, and flexible tools to complement official planning tools. Such means should enable close collaboration, multi-actors inclusion, and open dialogue. Social media and Web 2.0 platforms seem suitable instrument for that purpose.

The paper aims to discover whether the integration of Web 2.0 and social media tools in urban development processes can ease the engagement of stakeholders in urban development processes for smart city and living laboratories. It is also an attempt to give an overview of what is the role of social media tools in the context of smart city ecosystem. The research approach is qualitative since social media engagement in urban development is considered as relatively new phenomenon and has not been broadly researched. The empirical research data was gathered by interviewing five urban development experts represented different perspectives on the issue.

The findings of the research show that there is a high potential of engagement via social media tools but in certain type of urban development processes characterized by long duration and detailed nature. Social media tools could be used to achieve specific smart city target, and, and therefore, to some extent, contribute to the smart city development ecosystem.