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Volunteered Geographic Information and Legalization Process of Informal Housing in Croatia - Empowering Citizens for Collaborative Decision-making

This paper presents arguments for and development of spatial planning online support tool based on volunteered geographic information. The aim of the tool is to facilitate more collaborative decision-making process during legalization of informal construction in Croatia, which is possibly one of the most prominent recent public policies in Croatia. According to the Legalization Act (2012) owners have the possibility to legalize their housing units within one year. As such, it is a high-profile public case with a lot of media attention, providing a unique platform for demystifying spatial planning. The Legalization Act (2012) distributes legalization fees between local and national government level, providing the opportunity for empowering citizens for active participation. However, it seems that opportunity is being completely missed out. Therefore, the paper provides an example of an informal action supporting citizens to participate in local planning. The action aims to represent planning as an interactive social practice and to encourage citizens to recognize the value of their practical knowledge in the planning process. At the same time, it represents an attempt to complement an established political-administrative modus operandi in planning with the innovative, open and communicative web-based approach. The current Croatian legalization process is used as a context. One of its biggest challenges is understanding how the income generated by legalization fees should be used in order to improve lives of local communities. The project is based on the idea that informal construction is in many cases a system error and, moving beyond the issue of individual culpability, it offers the possibility of reinvesting legalization revenues directly in the local community. However, decision-making process is unclear and does not support collaborative planning. As a response, the developed tool acts in two directions – it provides updated information to the local communities on the status of legalization processes as described by citizens (volunteered geographic information) and at the same time it acts as a platform for open discussion on the developmental needs and investment priorities. Finally, this paper presents the tool which enables both spatial analysis and participative planning, serving as a common platform for citizens, professional planners and local policy makers to act in real time, increase institutional effectiveness and formulate in the collaborative manner the citizen’s gains.

volunteered geographic information ; legalization process ; interactive planning ; collaborative planning ; Croatia

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