Community Participation and Geographic Information Systems - Chapter 10

Chapter 10 Portland Metro’s dream for public involvement Mark Bosworth, John Donovan and Paul Couey 10.1 INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the public involvement efforts of Metro, the regional government for the Portland metropolitan area, in using GIS technology to engage residents and policy-makers in making informed decisions about issues related to growth management, land-use and transportation. The first part of this chapter describes current programmes and the use of GIS tech-nology. Section 10.4 proposes a new platform for public involvement that would allow public participation in planning efforts in ‘real time’. Using Internet-based technologies, it is possible to create a new channel for pub-lic participation in the planning process. GIS and public involvement professionals at Metro are exploring the potential for creating spatial representations of traditionally intangible information, such as what residents value about their homes and commun-ities, what they hope to protect or pass on to future generations and what makes this region special and unique. By capturing this information, Metro could begin to use this ‘value-based’ information to help shape future policy initiatives as well as to illustrate the value systems that resid-ents share. During the course of an intensive public outreach and long-range planning process known as the 2040 Framework, Metro has used GIS technology to enable residents in the decision-making process. These applications illustrate the potential of GIS technology as a platform for public involvement, and as a channel for accessing information about land-use policy decisions. 10.2 METRO AND ITS ROLE Metro, the nation’s only directly elected regional government, serves more than 1.3 million residents in the three counties and 24 cities of the Portland metropolitan region. In 1978, voters in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties approved the idea of a regional government to oversee © 2002 Taylor & Francis 126 M. Bosworth et al. Forest Grove Cornelius Hillsboro Beaverton Vancouver Camas Maywood Troutdale Portland Wood Multnomah Village County Gresham Washington County Tigard King City Milwaukie Happy Valley Lake Oswego Sherwood Tualatin Metro boundary Gladstone West Linn Clackamas County Urban growth boundary Oregon Wilsonville City Figure 10.1 The Portland Metro area comprises the urbanized portion of three counties. issues that transcend traditional city and county boundaries (Figure 10.1). Metro is responsible for transportation and land-use planning, solid waste management, regional parks and greenspaces, and technical services to local governments. Metro also manages the urban growth boundary, a planning tool that defines the limits of where urban growth can extend and where rural lands begin (Metro 1991). The Metro Charter, approved by voters in 1992, calls for the creation of the Future Vision (Metro 1992). During the deliberations prior to the adop-tion of the Future Vision Report, advisory committee members and staff were able to use Metro’s GIS system to provide interested citizens with a new view of the region. Through the use of shaded relief, full colour mapping images of the geography of the area within and surrounding the Metro serv-ice boundary, residents were able to understand the physical constraints of the area, how growth would likely occur and where critical natural resources still existed within our metropolitan urban form. This information helped shape the scope and final conclusions of the Future Vision Report. The bi-state metropolitan area has effects on, and is affected by, a much bigger region than the land inside Metro’s boundaries. Our ecologic and economic region stretches from the Cascades to the Coastal Range, from Longview to Salem. Any vision for a territory this large must be regarded as both ambitious and a work-in-progress. Metro, Future Vision Commission 1995 © 2002 Taylor & Francis Portland Metro’s dream for public involvement 127 10.2.1 The Region 2040 programme When voters approved the new charter, they established growth manage-ment as Metro’s primary mission and granted the agency authority to implement policies. Metro then began an intensive public outreach effort intended to involve residents in a regional planning process looking at how the region should grow for the next 50 years. Surveys designed to get answers about some basic livability questions were mailed to every house-hold in the region (more than 500,000 homes). More than 17,000 people expressed their opinions. Metro learned that the survey respondents: · value a sense of community, · favour the preservation of natural areas, farm and forest lands, · desire quiet neighbourhoods and accessibility to shopping, schools, jobs and recreational opportunities, · value the ‘feel’ of this region, with open spaces, scenic beauty and the small town atmosphere, and · favour a balanced transportation system that provides a range of travel opportunities including transit, walking, biking and autos. At the same time, Metro employed cutting-edge urban analysis and fore-casting technologies to study the ramifications of different growth manage-ment strategies. A wide range of possible approaches were identified and analysed for both positive and negative impacts to the region’s neighbour-hoods, transportation system, natural resources and key urban services. The results of this intensive study allowed Metro to focus on a smaller num-ber of possible options to pursue and prepare for public review. The Region 2040 planning programme culminated in the 2040 Growth Concept, a 50-year strategy for how the region will grow until the year 2040. The concept took four years to develop, including extensive public involve-ment outreach. The growth concept was adopted by ordinance in December 1995 by the Metro Council. This programme has been recognized as a national model of sustainable growth management planning (Metro 1995). 10.2.2 Evolution of a regional GIS Early on, such comprehensive analysis of land-use and demographic patterns required a high level of detail. In 1989, the idea of a seamless, parcel-specific database began its evolution into a regional land base information system. This development has progressed from a computer-assisted drawing file into a mature GIS environment that has grown more ‘intelligent’ through substantial data conversion. It has also become widely accessible through a desktop version on CD and an online inter-active mapping application that offers layers of geographic information © 2002 Taylor & Francis 128 M. Bosworth et al. individually or in combination to anyone who has Internet access and a web browser. These interactive tools have been built on the framework of the Regional Land Information System (RLIS), an internationally acclaimed GIS programme created by Metro’s Data Resource Center (DRC). RLIS is a parcel-based GIS, with data derived from assessment and taxation records from the three counties in Metro’s boundaries as its base. Additional layers have been built in reference to the parcel base including street centrelines, digital ortho-photography, vacant lands, topography, soils, natural hazards, etc. Metro data and map coverages are seamless across the region, eliminating problems that arise from data gaps and overlaps at city and county bound-aries. This characteristic alone contributes greatly to the power of GIS to bring diverse groups together on issues; the debate focuses on the issues, not on the data or methodology used to arrive at a particular position. 10.3 PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN THE PLANNING PROCESS Residents are the customers of Metro, with information and policy decisions as its product. Following this business orientation, Metro’s public outreach policies interpret involvement according to a communications pyramid that divides the general public into four audience groups (see Figure 10.2). The pyramid illustrates how the size of the groups and the complexity of the The Communication Pyramid 5K The Usual Suspects 75K 500K 1,000,000+ Season Ticket Holders Sleeping Giant ? Figure 10.2 The communications pyramid showing the division of target popula-tions for public involvement strategies. © 2002 Taylor & Francis Portland Metro’s dream for public involvement 129 messages interrelate. As interest/activity increases, number of people decrease. As interest/activity decreases, information gets simpler. At the top of the pyramid, the usual suspects represent the smallest yet most involved group of people Metro reaches. Conversely, they require the most detailed information. There are approximately 5,000 people in this group and the entrance threshold is attending Metro meetings. In the middle of the pyramid, we have the season ticket holders. This group is generally positively disposed toward our efforts and simply wants to be kept informed. They are ‘in their seats’, but only sporadically paying attention. They require less information than the activists, but must be kept regularly updated. There are about 75,000 people in this group. The third group is the sleeping giant, all the people who are minimally active civically (registered to vote) but who are not paying much attention to Metro messages or programmes. This group requires simple messages packaged in a convenient form. There are approximately 500,000 people in this category. Finally, we have the rest of the population that must be reached in new and creative ways in order to move them into the higher levels of our com-munications hierarchy. This makes up the last and largest portion of the pyramid. Residents in the region have a wide variety of methods to communicate back to Metro. These methods can be organized by the communications pyramid structure. For all three pyramid levels of involved citizens, the most accessible means of expressing their preferences is through voting in elections and on ballot measures that relate to planning and resource pro-tection. For the top two levels, the ‘usual suspects’ and the ‘season ticket holders’, responding to printed, electronic, phone or faxed surveys/ques-tionnaires via one of Metro’s outreach tools influences policy decisions. The most involved group, the ‘usual suspects’, influence policy by attending public meetings and engaging directly in dialogue with policy-makers and planners. 10.3.1 Existing GIS applications RLIS Lite – A CD-ROM product created by the Data Resource Center for distribution of GIS data in a convenient format for desktop mapping. Simplified data themes, non-normalized data tables and ‘human-readable’ data elements – streams are labeled as ‘Streams’ instead of ‘RIV’ with an attribute of less than 4 in a related table, etc. This single product has opened up the distribution of GIS to a much greater audience than was previously possible. Created as a commercial product, the structure and format of the GIS data in this product have become the common language for data exchange and data usage in the region. A GIS distributed in this format made the following public involvement programmes at Metro possible. © 2002 Taylor & Francis ... - tailieumienphi.vn