Knowledge Production in Urban Governance Systems through Qualitative Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Abstract

Urban governance offers opportunities for more inclusive urban management, incorporating tacit knowledge and citizens’ preferences. The question is how to elicit such knowledge and preferences so that they are both inclusive as well as efficient. Field visits to Indian cities have shown that a lot of effort is put into the implementation of E-governance tools and setting up Geographic Information Systems (GIS), focusing on administrative interaction with citizens. Little attention is paid to how GIS could be included in strategic governance processes.

The main question here is how a combination of GIS-based qualitative and quantitative approaches can make local embedded knowledge visible for inclusive urban governance. Therefore workshops were held in four Indian cities (Mysore, Hubli–Dharward, Kalyan and Mira–Bhayandar) with participants from local government departments and elected councillors to elicit and discuss local knowledge on urban inequalities. GIS maps were used as an input to the process and for visualizing outcomes.

The workshops show that using GIS throughout the process provides an understanding of the local context, enriches knowledge obtained from local databases, and therefore supports multiple forms of knowledge. However, the outcome depends greatly on the nature of input maps, the situated knowledge of workshop participants and map literacy.

Keywords

India knowledge types participation qualitative GIS tacit knowledge urban governance

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Albors

Ramos

J.C.

Hervasa

J.L.

(2008). New learning network paradigms: Communities of objectives, crowdsourcing, wikis and open source. International Journal of Information Management, 28(3), 194–202.

Baud

Kuffer

Pfeffer

Sliuzas

R.V.

Karuppannan

(2010). Understanding heterogeneity in metro-politan India: The added value of remote sensing data for analyzing sub-standard residential areas. International journal of applied earth observation and geoinformation: JAG, 12(5), 359–374.

Baud

Pfeffer

Sridharan

Nainan

(2009). Matching deprivation mapping to urban governance in three Indian mega-cities. Habitat International, 33(4), 365–377.

Baud

Sridharan

Pfeffer

(2008). Mapping urban poverty for local governance in an Indian mega-city: The case of Delhi. Urban Studies, 45(7), 1385–1412.

Biju

M.R.

(1998). The saga of decentralization in Kerala: Unique Model of participatory planning process. In Raj

S.L.

Mathais

(Eds.), People’s power and panchayati raj: Theory and practice. New Delhi: Institute of Social Studies.

Bruns

(2008). Blogs, Wikipedia, second life, and beyond: From production to produsage (Vol. 45). New York: Peter Lang Publishing Group.

Chambers

(2006). Participatory mapping and geographic information systems: Whose map? Who is empowered and who disempowered? Who gains and who loses? EJISDC, 25(2), 1–11.

Cinderby

(2010). How to reach the ‘hard-to-reach’: the development of Participatory Geographic Information Systems (P-GIS) for inclusive urban design in UK cities. Area, 42(2), 239–251.

Cope

Elwood

(2009). Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach (1st ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

10.

Dunn

C.E.

(2007). Participatory GIS—a people’s GIS? Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), 616–637.

11.

Elwood

S.A.

(2010). Geographic information science: emerging research on the societal implications of the geo-spatial web. Progress in Human Geography, 34(3), 349–357.

12.

Goodchild

(2007). Citizens as sensors: the world of volunteered geography. GeoJournal, 69(4), 211–221.

13.

Government of India. Retrieved 16 May 2011, from http://www.iii.gov.in/index.php/public-information-infrastructure/pii

14.

Gurza-Lavalle

Acharya

Houtzager

(Eds.). (2005). Beyond Comparative Anecdotalism: Lessons on Civil Society and Participation from Sao Paulo, Brazil, 33(6).

15.

Hordijk

M.A.

(2009). Peru’s Participatory Budgeting: Configurations of power, opportunities for change? The Open Urban Studies Journal, 2(33–45).

16.

Hoyt

Khosla

Canepa

(2005). Leaves, pebbles, and chalk: Building a public participation GIS in New Delhi, India. Journal of Urban Technology, 12(1), 1–19.

17.

Joshi

Sen

Hobson

(2002). Experiences with surveying and mapping Pune and Sangli slums on a geographical information system (GIS). Environment and Urbanization, 14(2), 225–240.

18.

Knigge

Cope

(2006). Grounded visualization: integrating the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data through grounded theory and visualization. Environment and Planning A, 38(11), 2021–2037.

19.

Knigge

Cope

(2009). Grounded visualization and scale: A recursive analysis of community spaces. In Cope

Elwood

(Eds), Qualitative GIS: A mixed methods approach (pp. 95–114). Thousand Oaks, CA.

20.

Kwan

M.-P.

Ding

(2008). Geo-Narrative: Extending Geographic Information Systems for Narrative An-alysis in Qualitative and Mixed-Method Research. The Professional Geographer, 60(4), 443–465.

21.

Martinez-Martín

(2005). Monitoring intra-urban inequalities with GIS-based indicators. With a case study in Rosario, Argentina. Enschede: Utrecht University—ITC.

22.

Martinez

(2009). The use of GIS and indicators to monitor intra-urban inequalities. A case study in Rosario, Argentina. Habitat International, 33(4), 387–396.

23.

Martinez

Pfeffer

van Dijk

(2009, 1–3 October 2009). Capacity of e-government tools: Claimed poten-tials, unnamed limitations. Paper presented at the The 10th N-AERUS conference: Challenges to open cities in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East: shared spaces within and beyond, IHS Rotterdam.

24.

McCall

M.K.

Minang

P.A.

(2005). Assessing participatory GIS for community-based natural resource manage-ment: claiming community forests in Cameroon. Geographical Journal, 171(4), 340–356.

25.

Ministry of Urban Development. Handbook on service level benchmarks for e-governance in municipalities. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://urbanservices.gov.in/sites/urbanservices.gov.in/files/slb/pdfs/SLB%20Handbook.pdf

26.

Ministry of Urban Development. Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission: Guidelines on National Mission Mode Project (NMMP) on e-governance in municipalities as part of JNNURM. Retrieved May 16, 2011, from http://jnnurm.nic.in/nurmudweb/e-Gov/guidelineegov.pdf

27.

Peters Guarin

(2008). Integrating local knowledge into GIS based flood risk assessment, Naga city, The Philippines. Wageningen University, ITC, Wageningen, Enschede.

28.

Pfeffer

Baud

Martinez

Sridharan

(2008, 12 December). The Role of SII for addressing urban deprivations in Indian cities. Paper presented at the The 9th N-AERUS conference: Securing positive change in international urban poverty reduction policies: Is international action changing urban poverty on the ground or not?, Edinburgh.

29.

Pfeiffer

Glaser

Vencatesan

Schliermann-Kraus

Drescher

Glaser

(2008). Facilitating par-ticipatory multilevel decision-making by using interactive mental maps. Geospatial Health, 3(1).

30.

Puri

S.K.

(2007). Integrating Scientific with indigenous knowledge: Constructing knowledge alliances for land management in India. MIS Quarterly, 31(2), 355–379.

31.

Puri

S.K.

Sahay

(2007). Role of ICTs in participatory development: An Indian experience. Information Technology for Development 13(2), 133–160.

32.

Richter

Miscione

Pfeffer

(2011). Enlisting SDI for urban planning in India: local practices in the case of slum declaration. In Nedović-Budić

Crompvoets

Georgiadou

(Eds), Spatial data infrastructures: North and South: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group.

33.

Scott

Barnett

(2009). Something in the Air: Science, environment, and contentious urban politics in post-apartheid South Africa. Geoforum, Special Issue on the Politics of Science, 40(3), 373–382.

34.

Sliuzas

Kuffer

Masser

(2010). The spatial and temporal nature of urban objects. In Jurgens

Rashed

(Eds), Remote sensing of urban and suburban areas (pp. 67–84). The Netherlands: Springer.

35.

Sliuzas

R.V.

(2004). Managing informal settlements: A study using geo-information in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. ITC, Enschede.

36.

Sridharan

(2009). New forms of contestation and cooperation in Indian urban governance In Baud

De Wit

(Eds), New forms of urban governance in India: Shifts, models, networks and contestations. New Delhi: Sage.

37.

Tashakkori

Teddlie

(2003). The past and future of mixed methods research: from data triangulation to mixed models designs. In Tashakkori

Teddlie

(Eds), Handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research (pp. 671–701). Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications.

38.

Tesfazghi

Martinez

Verplanke

(2010). Variability of quality of life at small scales: Addis Ababa, Kirkos sub-city. Social Indicators Research, 98(1), 73–88.

39.

Tufte

(2001). The visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press.

40.

van Ewijk

Baud

(2009). Partnerships between Dutch municipalities and municipalities in countries of migration to the Netherlands; knowledge exchange and mutuality. Habitat International, 33(2), 218–226.

41.

Verplanke

J.J.

Martinez

J.A.

Miscione

Georgiadou

P.Y.

(2010, 20–23 September 2010). Citizen surveil-lance of the state: A mirror for egovernment. Paper presented at the 9th IFIP TC 9 International Conference, HCC9 2010 and 1st IFIP TC 11 International Conference, CIP 2010: What kind of information society: Gov-ernance, virtuality, surveillance, sustainability, resilience, Brisbane, Australia.