This paper reflects an interest in the combination of: an emerging emphasis of communicative action and reemerging emphasis on public participation in urban planning research and practice; the rapid and widespread adoption of GIS for urban planning activities, and its implications; discourse over the nature and role of geographic visualization; and the advances in GIS-supported group decision making.  Public participation and empowerment have been central issues in community and city planning activities since the discipline's inception, albeit to higher or lower degrees in actual practice.  Personal interest in participation and empowerment in local neighborhood planning focuses on the use of GIS, especially how the ability to visualize geographic information influences these.  As such, this project has been influenced by many of the previous NCGIA Research Initiatives.  A pilot study that investigated how a GIS might facilitate spatial understanding, interpersonal communication, participation, empowerment, and collaborative decision making by those involved in urban neighborhood planning was recently completed as a prelude to dissertation research.

Practical and applicable research regarding the use and role of GIS as adopted, manipulated, and (re-) created by different and diverse participants in various stages of a live planning context, could benefit future collaborative neighborhood planning efforts.  Indeed, if the use of GIS is an effective means of increasing or enhancing individual and community empowerment and meaningful participation, then this is something urban planners (among others) ought to know, understand and actively encourage.  This project was a step in that direction.

Specific objectives of this pilot study included: primarily, the development and testing of an appropriate research methodology to explore the linkage(s) between GIS, participation, empowerment, and collaborative decision making in neighborhood planning; and secondarily, the development of a typology or classification system of visualization aids, organized by when and how these were used (and for what purpose) in the planning process(es).  Given space limitations, this paper will focus on the primary objective.  The structure of this paper is as follows: a very brief introduction to the study context is followed by an overview of the conceptual and methodological considerations which guided this research.  This is followed by a short discussion of implementation and results.  Implications for future research conclude this draft.
 

Seattle's North District Neighborhood Planning Effort (NDNPE) provided the context for this pilot research.  The planning area (see Figure 1.), located in extreme northeast Seattle and covering approximately 5.2 sq. miles, is projected to grow by nearly 1,600 households over the next two decades, and has been tentatively selected as one of Seattle's proposed "urban village" centers.1   The core planning group, constituted by some thirty individuals (private citizens and representatives of business or other interest groups), was hierarchically structured with Executive, Managing, and Planning Committees, and various task forces (e.g., Open Space, Civic Core, Transportation, etc.) which reflected urban village concerns and other issues associated with Seattle's Comprehensive Plan (drafted in 1994 in response to Washington's Growth Management Act).  Topically or procedurally focused ad hoc committees were common, and a team of consultants was hired to assist in preparing the final planning document.

At this time, the NDNPE is nearly finished with their planning process; their goal is to finalize their neighborhood planning document by October 28, 1998, and submit it to the City Council for adoption.  This neighborhood is among the first of nearly fifty who will participate in City-sponsored neighborhood planning.  Seattle's participation in neighborhood planning, while genuine and mandated, is ostensibly limited to the allocation of modest financial and minimal personnel resources.  Relevant to our discussion, the Office of Management and Planning provides each planning group with copies of its GIS database for use during its neighborhood planning.  Among the stated goals of this DataViewer is that it was "designed to be part of the support system for citizen participation in the planning process" (City of Seattle, 1997a).²

There has been an ongoing conversation among geographers regarding the nature and role of cartography. This debate focuses on the issue of geographic information visualization and map use, and whether maps are for analysis or communication.
 

Drawing on the literature of scientific visualization and exploratory data analysis, DiBiase (1990) proposed a framework for thinking about visualization in the context of scientific research (see Figure 2). His model emphasized the role of maps in a research sequence, from the initial data exploration and hypothesis formulation through the final presentation of results; the key distinction was between maps that foster private visual thinking (early in the process) and those that facilitate public visual communication (at the end of the process). Owing to the rapid changes in computer technology (e.g., GIS), it has been suggested that not only differences in tools for visualization and representation, but a fundamental difference in the nature of how map users interact with those representations will follow.

While there are no distinct boundaries within this space, there are distinct identifiable extremes - each of the eight corners (see MacEachren, 1994, for a full discussion and exemplars of these extremes). The point illustrated is that communication is an inherent component of all map use, even when visualization is the main goal; likewise, even the most mundane communication-oriented maps can serve as a prompt to mental visualization.  MacEachren's definitions are meant as a convenience that allow one to emphasize the difference in goals (and design principles) for maps whose primary purpose is to facilitate the transfer of knowledge versus maps whose primary purpose is to help individuals think spatially.

The participatory planning context becomes more complex because each participant may perceive and employ visualization differently, depending on their previous experience, familiarity, and expertise.  In addition, there may be differences in visualization based on whether one is engaged in these activities as an individual (e.g., a concerned neighborhood resident) or as a group representative (e.g., the chair of the local Chamber of Commerce).  Just as different individuals engage in decision processes with their own preexisting perceptions or frames of reference (Schon and Rein, 1994), so too representatives operate with the perspectives of their organizational culture (Sackmann, 1991).  To borrow from Rosaldo (1993), we live in a world of "multiplex communities" characterized by partially disjunctive and overlapping identities; occupying a position or structural location, one observes with a particular angle of vision.  Life experiences and multiplex identities both enable and inhibit particular kinds of insight and blindness.  Hence, one could, for example, employ visualization privately for personal spatial exploration and inquiry, either as a community resident or group representative, and, perhaps searching for different information, arrive at very different understandings or conclusions.  Further, that same person could refer to a displayed map image and publicly communicate or illustrate an idea, either as a group's representative or as an individual - but those ideas might be quite different (perhaps even in conflict).

Second, and perhaps unique to an urban planning decision making context, participants refer to places and spaces in temporal terms of the past, present, and future - sometimes sequentially, oftentimes nearly simultaneously (e.g., the distribution of neighborhood parks and open spaces as they are today, the distribution 10 years ago, and potential/changed distribution given population pressures and development projections 5 years from now); to be most helpful, visualization aids (whether GIS maps, photographs, renderings, etc.) should reflect the temporal orientation of the information that is needed or being discussed.³  Clearly, visualization of information (geographic or otherwise) is a key to understanding participation and empowerment in a neighborhood planning context.
 

These stages of decision making are interpreted in EAST as the three process aspects of: 1) convening a collaboration, 2) collaboration as a group process and 3) collaborative process outcomes (Nyerges et al, 1997b).   The EAST framework for examining GIS supported group decision making is one in which input constructs (e.g., the structure of technology, the structure of a group's character, and structure from task and environment) are appropriated during the actual collaborative decision making process. This appropriation of structure(s) facilitates and influences group processes, leads to emergent sources of structure, and ultimately leads to decision outcomes and possibly new social structures.

By developing a task model (see Figure 4) to re-construct the decision making process (after a de-constructive task analysis), one can identify those structures (and their appropriation) which influence different phases of the entire collaborative process (as indicated by the arrows in the illustration).
 

[For a larger, more detailed task model illustration, click here]

Decision contexts, sources of inputs (such as the nature of GIS, the subject domain and choice strategy), participants, and the synergy between them, might each influence the decision process in its progression or recursive unfolding.  A detailed task analysis of these influences to the process can lead to a descriptive task model (Innes 1992;  Knapp, 1995; Nyerges, 1993;).  Moreover, despite the uniqueness of decision domains and settings, the processes involved can be presented as a normative one based on a task analysis as outlined by DeSanctis and Gallupe (1987), in which decision process phases are associated with specific task types and purposes. ⁶    However, each phase of a decision process may be associated with more than one task purpose and type, and the process is not linear.

The decision domain and context may be closely associated with levels and units of appropriation analysis.  For DeSanctis and Poole (1994) this meant specification of one of three levels of analysis, each of which contained two units (see Table 2).  Nyerges and Jankowski (1997) advocate a similar "three-levels" scheme with EAST; however, they expand the analysis to pursue questions at (or across) an intra-organizational, organization-wide or inter-organizational level of analysis.
 

There is a (hierarchical) "nesting" in this scheme of levels and units (as, for example, micro analyses can be aggregated into a global analysis). Hence, it lends itself to easy comparison with the more familiar  basic design types of case studies.  As shown in Figure 6, the embedded type (with multiple levels or units) of analysis, for either single-case or multiple-case design, closely parallels either scheme.

Directly related to the level and unit of analysis, and perhaps even determining them, is the spatial-temporal context in which the participating group is active.  A functional taxonomy developed by DeSanctis and Gallup (1987) for GDSS research (see Figure 8) identified four environmental settings with archetypal examples - based on differences in group size and the physical proximity of its members.   Nyerges et al. (1997a) have presented a updated taxonomy (adapted from Armstrong, 1993) with meeting venues distinguished according to time and space (see Figure 9); a similar taxonomy has been presented by Jankowski et al. (1997).  To date, most GDSS, SDSS-G or GIS-2 empirical research has focused on the smaller, face-to-face, same-time and same-place, "conventional" meeting setting (Type 1 or 2 single-case studies).  Only recently have advances in communication and telecommunication technologies permitted exploration of meetings in the other venues; these alternative decision making venues provide new avenues for innovative research, and are beginning to receive empirical attention. ⁷
 

Figure 7.  Environmental Settings for Groups		Figure 8.  Meeting Venues by  Time and Space
(Source:  DeSanctis and Gallup, 1987)		(Source:  Nyerges and Jankowski, 1997)

Figure 9:  Research Design as a Combination of Setting Design and Research Technique

(Source:  Adapted from Nyerges and Jankowski, 1998)

As with other research programs, concerns of validity that relate directly to the amount of structure, control, and objectivity imposed by the researcher, mandate that strategies and techniques be thoroughly considered.  According to McGrath (1994) and Hedrick et al., (1993) four types of validity (i.e., construct, statistical, internal and external) are typically considered when planning research programs and selecting specific strategies and techniques.  Each type of validity is important to conducting sound research, and each is subject to certain types of potential threats (see Andranovich and Riposa, 1993, for a brief discussion of threats to internal and external validity, and Cook and Campbell, 1979, for a lengthy treatment of thirty-three possible threats to various types of validity).  The relative emphasis of one type of validity over another may vary, depending on the type and unique combination of research strategy and techniques; furthermore specific strategies and their variations may encounter quantitatively more or qualitatively different threats than others.

Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages for both collecting certain types of data, and ensuring that the data, once properly collected, appropriately addresses the research question(s).  Hence, each strategy may have different implications for the types of analyses possible, for deriving results and conclusions, and ultimately, for the credibility of inferences or recommendations.  While a researcher's personal preferences, familiarity or skills may also factor into the selection of research strategies and techniques, the role of the setting design is crucial.  Usability studies will be quantitatively and qualitatively different from a field or case study, and both would be different from laboratory and field experiments.  Further, techniques such as questionnaires and observation may both be employed either in a usability study or a field study; however, the actual conduct of such techniques will be extremely different (again, for a review of these issues and select SDSS-G examples, see Nyerges, 1996, Nyerges et al, 1997b, and Nyerges and Jankowski, 1998).

Lastly, triangulation must be addressed.  Referring specifically to case studies, Stake (1994, p241) contends that its purpose:

is to reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation - thus, various procedures, including redundancy of data gathering and procedural challenges to explanations are employed; triangulation has been generally considered a process of using multiple perceptions to clarify meaning, verifying the repeatability of an observation or interpretation.  Acknowledging that no observation or interpretation is perfectly repeatable, triangulation serves to clarify meaning by identifying different ways the phenomenon is being seen.

It should be immanently clear from this short discussion of methodological considerations (i.e., theoretical premises, possible research questions or hypotheses, levels and units of analysis, meeting venues, research setting design, research techniques, questions of validity, and mandates for triangulation), that there is indeed a considerable range of possible empirical research topics and programs for one to pursue in PPGIS and collaborative decision making.

Although the ultimate purpose of this research is to explore the associations between visualization and meaningful participation and/or empowerment (and hopefully identify means to encourage or enhance these among participants), this pilot study did not set out to evaluate participation and empowerment per se.  That is, participation can be measured and characterized in a number of ways, quantitatively and qualitatively; there are certainly many coding schemes for capturing the activities of people participating in group settings (e.g. Poole, 1981) and GIS supported group settings (e.g., Nyerges, 1995).  In fact, such characterizations of participation would serve as the necessary basis for any resultant typology of visualization and visual aid use.  One should be cautious, though, not to conflate the quantity of participation with quality, nor the action of participation with empowerment.  Thus, the only attempt to evaluate the meaningfulness of participation for the participants, or their sense of empowerment, during this pilot study was to ask directly via survey and interview.  Several models of participation and empowerment have been reviewed, and ideas from these may be systematically applied, incorporated or tested in future research.

Before measures or proxy indicators can be identified and incorporated into a research program, one needs to be clear on exactly what one means by public participation and empowerment.  The terms are usually understood to be a beneficial if not necessary aspect of planning practice, and they are used in conversations universally - as if every one knew what they meant.  There are, in fact, several types or models of participation and empowerment.
 
 

Sherry Arnstein's seminal article on citizen participation in planning activities identified eight different models of participation (see Figure 11) based on power in actual decision making authority; for Arnstein, citizen participation is citizen power, specifically the redistribution of power that enables those citizens who "have-not."  It follows that participation without redistribution of power is both empty and frustrating.  The idea was not that there are only eight models -  Arnstein (p217) contends there may be 150 such rungs, with less sharp and pure distinctions among them, in the real world - but that their are significant gradations of citizen participation.  The term is not monolithic.  Using the ladder metaphor, Arnstein (1969) presented a typology drawn from federal programs (but which were thought to have local institutional applicability) that influenced the normative guides of citizen participation in planning for the next 25 years.

According to Rocha (1997), empowerment is also a concept that seems to be used rather indiscriminately, while its meaning is uncritically assumed to be universal.  Given this lack of clear definition (much less how to put such an idea or ideal into practice), public participation often serves as a proxy for empowerment.  Rocha has attempted to sort through the empowerment theory literature, drawing on community participation and grassroots organizing models of empowerment, and including literature from community psychology, political science and planning.⁸
 
 

Twenty-eight years after Arnstein, we are presented with another ladder metaphor (see Figure 12).  While there are similarities between these two typologies, there are two significant differences.  First, Rocha's typology is based on McClelland's classification of power experiences, which itself is based on the source of power and the object (or target) of power; this contrasts with Arnstein's interpretation of power (in the classic Dahl sense that power is the ability to affect the behavior of another to do something they would not otherwise do).  Second, in Arnstein's ladder the rungs shared the same locus, that of the community; in Rocha's typology the locus varies  from individual to community.

Empowerment types were distinguished according to four constitutive dimensions: locus (the intended arena of change), process (actual methods used), goals (intended outcomes), and power experience.  A table summarizing these dimensions follows: 

(Source:  Rocha, 1997)

Renn et al. (1995a), cognizant that different models of participation existed in planning and policy making activities, believed that a common framework for evaluation could be devised, and was desperately needed.⁹   For Renn and associates, public participation is social interaction and discourse.  From the literature of participatory democracy, competence and fairness were identified as the primary criteria for what counts as high-quality and meaningful public participation; fairness and competence also become the "meta-criteria" for designing a normative model of public participation which emphasizes individual autonomy and self-reflection (and includes 33 sub-criteria), based on Habermas's theories of society, communicative rationality, and communicative action (see Webler, 1995 for full explanation).  An application of their evaluative framework to eight common public participation models was quite revealing.  Individually, some models faired better than others in comparison to the ideal model.  The authors did not assert that one model was superior to another; however, they found that certain models were better suited to certain planning areas or decision types.¹¹

While the proceeding paragraphs on public participation and empowerment are an oversimplification of each of these writers' assessments and arguments, it is worth noting that such contributions of defining, characterizing, and evaluating participation and empowerment do exist, and that these can be incorporated into a more comprehensive and systematic study.

Implementation did not go as planned.  The litany of challenges and impediments is long; yet, in sum, they could be classified either as an issue of logistics, control or objectivity.  The four most significant issues included: mortality (Campbell and Stanley, 1966) in NDNPE member participation (especially regarding DataViewer interest, usage, and attrition); time and timing challenges; instances of missed or miscommunication; and the nearly total lack of researcher distance and objectivity.  Obviously, this last issue is the most damaging.  As Atkinson and Hammersley (1994) state, participant observation is always a challenge in fieldwork.  In this pilot project, observation became second to participation; in fact, this researcher's involvement had gone beyond mere participation-observation to the extreme of complete participation.  Serving as the de facto GIS work session facilitator, "special project" coordinator, and all-around telephone technical support (for those NDNPE participants working at home), the role of passive observer had been explicitly transformed.¹²  To be fair, it is admitted that more active and explicit participation on the part of this researcher in the NDNPE was not refused.  Perhaps inspired by the notion of praxis (Lather, 1986), this researcher consciously traded the objective demands of science for the opportunity to assist.  While such participatory activity may appease the community activist within, it does little to further this research project within the eyes of the academic community.

As a consequence, this pilot project was both a dismal defeat and a delightful success.  It was a failure in that the drafted research program, as actually implemented, certainly did not produce valid evidence that would address the research questions.  Even if the program had been implemented in its ideal fashion (e.g., no attrition and no communication or temporal obstacles), it is unknown if this design would have met the four validity criteria, or the prescriptions for triangulation.  Conversely, this project is a resounding triumph in that it highlighted the shortcomings of the research program, provided valuable information about the context and topic, and absolutely assisted participants in their neighborhood planning endeavors. To be sure, there is a real story to be told, and there is plenty of evidence to tell it. There is a story of community residents individually and collectively participating in the process of spatial exploration, discovery, analysis and communication.  There is a story of neighbors coming together to share ideas and concerns, reach consensus, and forge working partnerships.  There is a story of people working collaboratively and establishing connections that just might develop into lasting relationships.  It is quite tempting to state there is a story about genuine social and physical community building.  But, alas, the story simply is not valid.  Between the loss of validity and the acquisition of activism, there must be a valid and viable middle road.  Finding that road is one of the major challenges of future research. 

All qualitative researchers are philosophers in the sense they are guided by principles which com-bine beliefs about ontology, epistemology, and methodology; these beliefs about the nature of re-ality, the relationship between the inquirer and the known, and how one knows or gains knowledge of the world, shapes how the qualitative researcher sees the world and acts in it.

There are several models of participatory inquiry.  Of these, "participatory action research" is probably the most widely practiced (Reason, 1994), and is the one most germane to this discussion. Participatory action research, also termed participatory research (PR), is a strategy with a double objective: first, to produce knowledge and action directly useful to a group of people; and second, to empower people at a further, deeper level through the process of constructing and using their own knowledge.  Such objectives are accomplished through a three-pronged strategy involving research or social investigation, educational work, and action (Hall, 1979; 1992).  Moreover, PR values genuine collaboration between the trained researcher and others; the traditional subject-object relationship of orthodox science is replaced with a subject-subject one.  PR is often characterized as a radical departure from traditional positivist scientific research because of its explicit goals of social change, its objectives of political empowerment, and its orientation to the collaborative production of research processes and knowledge creation.
 

PR, variously defined across space, time, and situational context, can be identified by the following five characteristics (Cancian and Armstead, 1992):  participation by the people being studied; inclusion of popular knowledge; a focus on power and empowerment; consciousness-raising and education of the participants; and political action.  To elaborate, first, participation (and ideally, control) by those being "studied" can be viewed as a continuum that ranges from low levels of participation (e.g., asking people who were interviewed to read and comment on a transcript) to high levels (e.g., determining major research questions and overall study design).  Second, popular knowledge, personal experience and feel-ings, artistic and spiritual expressions, and others are validated and considered useful ways of knowing.  Third, power and empowerment is a core issue in PR, with the transformation of power structures and relationships as well as the empowerment of oppressed people being one of the main tenets and goals.  Fourth, consciousness-raising and education is closely related to power.  Various methods are employed to reduce participants' feelings of incompetence, for example, or to relate personal problems and percep-tions of life quality to the reality of unequal distributions of power in the community and society.  Impor-tant objectives within this area include enabling participants to become more confident and effective as they speak out, to learn that others share similar experiences, and to learn research skills and relevant technical information.  Fifth, PR is oriented towards sociopolitical action, namely, the cultivation of a "critical consciousness" oriented towards structural change (see Hall, 1975, 1981, for an evolving list of characteristics, and Brown and Tandon, 1983, for a treatment of PR contrasted with action research).

These characteristics provide for an ambitious agenda, yet they center around the idea of empowering people - not just in the sense of being psychologically capacitated, but also in the sense of being in-power politically to effect needed social change (Park, 1993).  PR provides the framework in which people may come to understand the social forces in operation and gain strength in collective action; hence, its purposes are cognitive and transformative; PR assumes knowledge is related to power and power is related to change or maintenance of the status quo, and it produces knowledge that is simultaneously and intimately linked with social action (Gaventa, 1993).  As understood by Couto (1987): the major assumption of PR is that it will lead to change by the people who do research; advocates thus distinguish PR from other research which assumes that change will come, if it comes about at all, by the action of people who read the published work of authors.

Certain theories of knowledge will either support or diminish the efficacy of PR.  Recently, PR has drawn on critical social theory in which the theory of knowledge and the theory of society merge (Bredo and Feinberg, 1982).   Indeed, it seems that participatory research, as outlined above, is critical social research.  As Comstock (1982, p371-372) asserts:

The function of critical social science is the self-conscious practice which liberates humans from ideologically frozen conceptions of the actual and the possible...[further], a consistent critical method which treats society as a human construction and people as the active subjects of that construction would be based on a dialogue with its subjects...[and] must directly contribute to the revitalization of moral discourse and revolutionary action by engaging its subject in a process of active self-understanding and collective self-formation...it becomes a method for self-conscious action rather than an ideology for the technocratic domination of a passive populace.

PR is based on the epistemological assumption that knowledge is constructed socially and therefore that research approaches which allow for social, group or collective analysis of life experiences of power and knowledge are most appropriate.   Hence, there is no methodological orthodoxy, no cookbook approaches to follow (Hall, 1992).  In fact, Reason (1994) aptly states that it is easier to discover the ideology of the approach than a detailed description of what actually takes place; moreover, owing to the PR emphasis on inquiry as empowermnet, the actual methodologies (that in conventional research would be labeled research design, data gathering, dta analysis, etc.) may take a second place to the emergent processes of collaboration and dialoug that empower, motivate, increase self-esteem, and develop community solidarity.

Nevertheless, there are some prescriptive or normative guidelines.  Brown and Tandon (1983) provide a useful summary of methodology (see Table 7) which highlights the roles and critical choices involved in the process of inquiry;  most notable is that PR is explicit about community members' contributions to problem definition, research, and use of results - it insists that community participants are identified as researchers (Hall, 1993). 

In keeping with critical social theory, Comstock (1982) reminds us that the aim of this research is enlightened self-knowledge and effective political action.  He states (p378-379):

Its method is dialogue, whose effect is to heighten its subjects' self-awareness of their collective potential as the active agents of history.   Practically, this means the critical researcher must begin from an intersubjective understanding of the participants of a social setting and to return to these participants with a program of education and action designed to change their understanding and their social conditions. Analytically, critical research must, first, provide and account of the dynamics of the social situation of its subjects, that is, a theory of the genesis and maintenance of both social conditions and intersubjective understandings, and, second, must offer a critique of ideologies based on a comparison of the social structure with participant's understandings of it.

Table 8:  Steps in the Research Methods of Positivist and Critical Social Science

(Source: Comstock, 1982)

Such research is an example of praxis, and is well-grounded in the planning literature.¹³  Indeed, many researchers - not only in planning but in education, sociology, urban affairs, anthropology and numerous other disciplines have set precedents for an active and explicit connection between applied empirical research, practice, public participation and empowerment.  A rationale, then, for more participatory-based research in an area of professional planning practice (i.e., neighborhood planning) seems quite justified.

Further, if one interprets neighborhood planning as a process involving uncertainty in knowledge and significant stakes in decision outcome (refer to note 11), then a "post-normal" approach such as that advocated by Rosa (1998) and Ravitz and Functowitz (1998), which operationalizes diverse and unorthodox methods of investigation and knowledge creation, is definitely warranted.  Moreover, if an evaluation of public participation and empowerment is incorporated into future study, such as Webler's (1995) Habermas-inspired framework based on communicative competence and fairness, and if such a framework is based on a normative model of public participation (for maximum participant benefit), then a researcher's involvement (as facilitator) seems even more likely.
 
Participatory research has not been proposed as a panacea for all the research challenges encountered in conducting this pilot study, nor as a preventive strategy against anticipated challenges in future research.  As noted above, there are several other important recommendations and opportunities.  Nonetheless, PR is a research approach originating from community-defined needs, involving community members, and leading to community-based action (Stoecker and Beckwith, 1992). As applied to an investigation of PPGIS and decision making in a neighborhood planning context, PR would not only facilitate an information needs assessment (geographic information or otherwise), or encourage the provision of training, but would empower this student researcher to become actively involved in helping other participants formulate, research, and find possible answers their own questions.  Figure 12 illustrates how a research program influenced by the tenets of participative research might be visualized.
 

         Neighborhood planning is the research context; within that, the university-trained researcher pursues her or his research question(s) through a methodologically sound, critical research program (because these questions are relatively specific or predetermined, they are represented within a solid line box). Yet, in pursuing one's research question(s), one may also engage and assist neighborhood participants as they endeavor to answer their own research and planning questions (illustrated as Q1, Q2 and Q3, which may overlap, as with Q2 and Q3, or generate additional educational and researchable questions;  the dashed outline of these community participant questions indicates that there may be some influence between the participants' question and that of the university researcher).  In keeping with the PR approach, each of these participant-generated concerns can be addressed through the research (R), education (E), and action (A) strategy (because research, education and action are inter-related and interwoven in PR, their spheres are illustrated with a dotted outline to highlight their interconnection and fluidity).

This approach would permit one to help community participants help themselves learn more about neighborhood planning and collaborative decision making, how to employ GIS and other visualization tools, and seek answers to practical and pressing planning research inquiries.  Indeed, a PR approach would ensure that the real issues - those of public particapation and empowerment - would be made explicit, and that explicit steps would be taken to encourage and enhance them.  Moreover, given PR's flexibility towards methodology, the previously noted mandate for multiple research strategies, multiple techniques, and multiple data sources could more easily be met.  In sum, a well-planned and faithfully-implemented participatory research program should satisfy the demands of both the academic and neighborhood community.¹⁴   Doing so, of course, will be the challenge of this researcher's dissertation.
 

2.  Technically, the DataViewer's software was developed with ESRI's ArcView® (ver 2.1.1); in addition to basic software and data, customized views and user interfaces, special scripting programs, and metadata files are included.  The DataViewer is distributed as a set of eight CD-ROMs; each disk corresponds to a unique geographic extent and contains a self-executing program capable of displaying over one-hundred ten data themes organized into the following ten views (or elements): 1) base map; 2) crime & public safety; 3) housing, health, education, and civic locations; 4) land use/value/zoning; 5) landscape and environmental features; 6) municipal and district boundaries; 7) parks, open space & recreation; 8) population and demographic data; 9) streets and transportation; and 10) utilities (City of Seattle, 1997b).

3.  The medium or format of visualization may depend on the extent or scale of the project or discussion, as well as the availability of data.  In example, a GIS is appropriate to show previous watershed boundaries, current encroachment, and projected development densification.  An AutoCAD or similar type of rendering technology might be more suitable for specific sites, buildings or streetscapes.  Michael Shiffer, a past participant in NCGIA Initiatives, has contributed significantly to the issues of spatial data's temporal variations (1995c) and the use of other interactive and graphic formats through his work in planning support systems (1992; 1993; 1995a; 1995b).

4.  An exhaustive review of Adaptive Structuration Theory or the Enhanced version is not included in this document (for a more thorough treatment of the former see Poole and DeSanctis, 1990, 1992 and DeSanctis and Poole, 1994; for discussion of the latter see Nyerges and Jankowski, 1997; Nyerges et al., 1997a; Jankowski et al., 1997; and Nyerges, 1996 - although "AST-based" was the terminology employed in the latter two references).
 
5.  Several similar task models have been developed by GDSS researchers, including Pinsonneault and Kraemer (1989) and DeSanctis and Poole (1994).  Although the basic constructs are similar, variables or criteria will vary among different decision making task environments.  For example, Nyerges (1997) has developed a list of 33 primary variables characterizing the input, process, and outcome aspects of a similar decision task model; each of the primary variables contains sub-variables which can be associated with a fixed, controlled, measured or random value.

6.  Drawing on McGrath's (1984) conceptual task circumplex, which described human interaction by task type (each of which serves a basic purpose or function according to what a group must accomplish at that particular moment), DeSanctis and Gallup identified three task purposes (generate, choose, and negotiation) and six task types (planning, creativity, intellective, preference, cognitive conflict and mixed motive).  The major group goals in decision making according to this scheme include generating ideas and actions, choosing alternatives, and negotiating solutions - similar to the intelligence, choice, design scheme noted earlier.

7. This is not to suggest that meetings or decision making by participants separated by time and space have not occurred throughout history; rather, it is only now that researchers have the ability to systematically investigate such activities in real-time.  As an example of this new-venue research, Jankowski and Stasik (1997) recently presented a prototype Spatial Understanding and Decision Support System (SUDSS) which enables group collaboration across space and time using the Internet.

8. Rocha found that empowerment theory in community psychology focused primarily on change with the individual whereas in political science it tended to focus on group processes such as representation and voting.  In planning, empowerment tended to focus on economic development, community participation, and grassroots coalitions.

9. Influenced by developments in risk assessment and risk communication, Renn et al. (1995a) offer the following assessments: 1) the last decade has witnessed only a fair amount of interest within the sociological or political science communities in issues of public participation; 2) the traditional forms of public participation - hearings and advisory committees - certainly have advantages, but are not able to fufill popular demands for widespread and meaningful citizne involvement in environmental decision making; 3) there is a perceived need for new models of participation that enhance decisino making competence and legitmacy through more meaningful participation by citizens; and 4) a systematic framework for evaluation on any but the most abstract level is completely absent.

10. Participation models included in the analyses were citizen advisory committees; citizen panels (planning cells); citizens juries; citizen initiatives; negotiated rule making; mediation; compensation and benefit sharing; and Dutch study groups.  Traditional methods such as public hearings or inquiries, social surveys, arbitration or scientific advisory groups were excluded because these did not meet a sufficient number of the criteria to be considered candidates for ideal discourse.

11. The conclusions by Renn and associates is heavily influenced by the work of Funtowitz and Ravitz, also involved in risk assessment and communication.  Funtowitz and Ravitz (1985, 1992) argued that as a decision or policy becomes more complex or less certain (in terms of known facts or outcomes) and/or the human stakes become more important/serious, then the ontology, epistomology and methodology must be questioned more rigourously.  Simply put, the more complicated or consequential a decision, the more one cannot rely simply on technical or scientific decision making; more people (with different views and voices, different perspectives and frames, and different values and worldviews) must be included  in the more complex and significant decisions (see Rosa, 1998, for a recent interpretation of their scheme in a call for "post-normal" risk science.  Renn et al. (1995b) adeptly realized that this was also the case of most planning activities.  Mundane technical decisions, or those with little or no environmental/human consequences need not involve extensive or meaningful public participation; these could be handled by quasi-regulatory or citizen advisory groups.  Other decisions, which might have lasting (if not permanent) and significant (if not irreversible) ramifications, needed to include the public (in all its fair and competent diversity) in the planning process, and might be better served with models similar to citizen initiatives or study groups.

12. To elaborate, this researcher's participation, and explicit facilitation, were driven by two mutually reinforcing situations.  First, City staff organized and conducted the two 3-hour training sessions to introduce the DataViewer to  interested participants.  Subsequent invitations to City personnel to help with work sessions were left unanswered.  Further, the City-appointed liaison from the NPO, who had received training as a community planner and had assisted the NDNPE with other concerns, had no training or experience with GIS or the DataViewer.  No NDNPE participant had previous skills GIS.  Without continued technical support from the City, it was clear participants would need to learn on their own, as best they could, or go without.  Secondly, and simultaneously, the NDNPE came to realize this researcher has had training and experience in GIS use.  At first courteous invitations were extended to participate in the GIS work-shops.  These were accepted.  Later, and especially in light of the City's absence, this researcher's presence and assistance at the workshops became expected.

13.  There are many encouraging examples of participatory approachs to research and practice in urban planning.  For example, Forester has written on the importance of listening, questioning and organizing (1981;1989); elsewhere he has written on the need for critical theory in planning practice, and attention to the real needs of commu-nity members and community groups (e.g., Forester 1980, 1993; Krumholz and Forester, 1990).  Likewise, Judith Innes has devoted much attention to these issues; she has researched the link between planning knowledge and action from a phenomenological view (de Neufville, 1985), the role of storytelling and other forms of expressive and tacit knowledge construction (de Neufville, 1986;1987), and more recently, group processes, consensus building, and communicative action in planning (Innes, 1992; 1995; 1996; 1998).  Healey (1992a, 1992b, 1996) and Shiffer (1992, and elsewhere) have also advocated involvement which furthers communication- and consensus-based planning.  Recently, Huxhold's associates in Milwaukee explored GIS and neighborhood planning as a model for revitalizing communities; in this case they presented a model with four discrete steps: 1) needs analysis, 2) field survey, 3) introduction of residents to a local data center, and 4) GIS training sessions (Myers et al., 1995).   Most recent, this year's Summer issue of the Journal of Planning Education and Research featured presentations delivered at an  Association of the Collegiate Schools of Planning symposium on university-community outreach partnerships; while such partnerships were certainly not without problems or criticisms, clearly the message was that more academic institution - community institution collaborations were needed.

14. PR has traditionally not been well-received by the academic community (Cancian, 1993).  It is viewed as contradictory to established knowledge-distributing systems (Heaney; 1993).  For doctoral students, it is important to realize PR is messy and time-consuming.  As sanguinely stated by Maguire (1993), people will surely not become empowered, liberated, or transformed on a doctoral student's schedule. Ph.D. students cannot afford the luxury of working with a community on their timetable and with the possibility that the project will be called off or take on a different set of goals - in fact, become a different project.  Further, financial considerations and doctoral committees conspire to impose rigid controls on a student's proposal, research, and its allowable conclusions, all of which not only inhibits real community participation in the project, but effectively prohibits community control over the outcomes (Heaney, 1993).  Even junior or tenured academicians may find themselves defending their community service and research activity in institutions that only give credit for publication numbers (Reardon, 1998); as stated by Ken Reardon, it would be much easier to sit and do secondary analysis of somebody else's data and crank out the papers (Reardon, et al, 1993).
 

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