Crowdsourcing in Community Participatory Planning in China:
Case Studies in Four Communities in Shenzhen
by
Qianqian Zhang
B.Eng. Urban and Regional Planning
B.A. Economics
Peking University, 2012
Submitted to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master in City Planning
atthe
of Technology
Institute
Massachusetts
June 2014
A41NES
MASSACHUSETTS IN61'l'E
OF TECHNOLOGY
JUN 19 2014
LIBRARIES
@2014 Qianqian Zhang. All rights reserved.
The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly
paper and electronic copies of this thesis document
in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.
Signature redacted
Signature of Author:
- 1Department of Urb;*jStudies and Planning
May 22, 2014
Signature redacted
Certified by:
Lawrence J.Vale
Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning
Thesis Advisor
Signature redacted
Accepted by:
a/
P. Christopher Zegras
Associate Professor of Urban Studies and Planning
Chair, MCP Committee
1
Crowdsourcing in Community Participatory Planning in China:
Case Studies in Four Communities in Shenzhen
by Qianqian Zhang
Submitted to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in City Planning
June 2014 @2014 Qianqian Zhang. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Community participatory planning is a crucial component of urban planning but there is no
effective public participation in the Chinese planning decision-making process, which brings up
social conflicts and planning failures. As more urban redevelopment are launched in China and
social media becomes more prevalent, crowdsourcing may change the participatory dynamic. This
research started from the interaction of crowdsourcing and community participation. By defining
crowdsourcing as an out sourcing peer-problem solving process, this research conducted 80
interviews in four communities (Danwei Housing, gated community, urban village, suburban
village), studied two cases, and explored the existing community participatory regime,
crowdsourcing's application and influences on Chinese community participatory planning.
It is found that different entities' focus topics mis-match during participation. By using the three
fold analytic framework of information flow/incentive structure/power structure, this research
further shows that the incentive structure and power structure are to some extent not aligned,
resulting in ineffective information exchange. Crowdsourcing, however, can enhance weak
connections by providing technical support, changing incentives and power structures. Moreover,
crowdsourcing's application in urban planning is found to be a spectrum: crowd to none, crowd to
one and crowd to crowd. Different types of crowdsourcing has different influences on the civic
participation ladders, which consist of the ladders of civic awareness, strategy and outcome. These
three ladders associate with each other, revealing the holistic picture of Chinese public
participation. Crowdsourcing helps move up the awareness ladder the most and also enables the
move up on strategy ladder and forces the government to move up the outcome ladder.
Crowdsourcing is an emerging concept and obtains a great potential in planning area. This research
provides a new lens for understanding crowdsourcing's application and influence in participatory
planning in China and also calls for exploration.
Thesis Supervisor: Lawrence J. Vale
Thesis Readers: Tunney F. Lee, Jinhua Zhao
2
Acknowledgement
Can't believe time flies so fast. Can't imagine if I were not at MIT, what my life would be.
The experience has been so unique and irreplaceable: the nerdy, the geek, the simple praise of
nature and the braveness of exploring everything even out of your comfort zone. This is the first
time that at graduation point, and at the end of a journey, I feel like this is just a fresh new start and
nothing to be afraid. So many things deserve a life-time exploration and expedition, this is probably
one of the true essence and blossom of life.
So is my thesis. A lot of thank-you s, for helping me come to this new start of a life-time exploration.
Thank you Larry, Jinhua and Tunney. In my mind, you three are like a powerful trident. Each end of
the trident has a unique perspective and approach which enriches me.
Thank you my friends at IDG, at JTL, at D-lab, at Slab, at WRI, at DUSP, at MIT, at Harvard and every
corner on this planet. I got so inspired from you, pursuing dreams for researches, for running NGOs,
for helping minorities. We discuss about the huge topics about urban trends, economics and politics
trends, while we also complain about life and have gossip. We never get bored, we keep each other
inspired, clam, and we all move on! Even thousands of hundreds of kilometers away, we are just
like being together. I do get your supports.
Thank you my parents and my family. Words just can't express everything.
One more thing. Thank you my dream. The dream is associated with my thesis research. Hopefully
one day, the dream will come true.
3
Content
Chapter One
Introduction ..............................................................................................................................................
8
1.1.
Background and Significance .................................................................................................
8
1.2.
Research Questions ............................................................................................................
9
Chapter Two
History and Theory ofParticipatory Planning, and Crowdsourcing.......................................11
2.1.
History of com m unity participatory planning in China ....................................................
11
2.2.
Theory of participatory planning and Discussions in China..............................................
13
2.3.
Crow dsourcing in public sector ..........................................................................................
16
2.4.
Things yet to be explore.......................................................................................................
21
Chapter Three
Research D esign.
....................................................................................................................................
23
3.1.
Definition of crow dsourcing...............................................................................................
23
3.2.
M ethodology ..............................................................................................................................
24
3.3.
Sites and com m unity types..................................................................................................
26
3.3.1.
Danw ei Housing.................................................................................................................
28
3.3.2.
Gated Com m unity.........................................................................................................
28
3.3.3.
Urban Village......................................................................................................................29
3.3.4.
Suburban Village................................................................................................................30
3.4.
Case study selection ..................................................................................................................
31
3.5.
Theoretical Fram ew ork ......................................................................................................
32
Chapter Four
From Focus Topic to..Information, Incentive and Power Structure:
Crow dsourcing's Potentilal ..................................................................................................................
4.1.
Entities and Focus Topic ......................................................................................................
4.1.1.
Danw ei Housing.................................................................................................................36
4
34
35
4.1.2.
Gated Com m unity..........................................................................................................
4.1.3.
Urban Village......................................................................................................................40
4.1.4.
Suburban Village................................................................................................................42
4.2.
Inform ation, Incentive and Power structure......................................................................
38
44
4.2.1.
Danwei Housing.................................................................................................................45
4.2.2.
Gated Com m unity..........................................................................................................
4.2.3.
Urban Village......................................................................................................................53
4.2.4.
Suburban Village................................................................................................................
57
Crowdsourcing's potential influence in institutional structures.......................................
63
4.3.
48
Chapter Five
From Crowdsourcing Spectrum to..Chinese Civic Participatory Ladder:
Crow dsourcing's Influence..................................................................................................................70
5.1.
Crow dsourcing spectrum ....................................................................................................
71
71
5.1.1
Crow d to none (Casel)...................................................................................................
5.1.2
Crow d to one......................................................................................................................74
5.1.3
Crow d to crow d (Case2) ...............................................................................................
75
Ladder of Chinese civic participation .................................................................................
79
5.2.1.
Ladder of civic aw areness............................................................................................
80
5.2.2.
Ladder of strategy .........................................................................................................
81
5.2.3.
Ladder of outcom e.......................................................................................................
82
5.2.4.
Relationship of the three..............................................................................................
83
5.2.
5.3.
Crow dsourcing's influence over the ladders......................................................................
85
5.4.
W estern practice .......................................................................................................................
90
Chapter Six
Conclusion and Policy Im plications..............................................................................................
94
6.1.
M ajor findings and Conclusion...........................................................................................
94
6.2.
Policy Im plications ....................................................................................................................
98
6.3.
Lim itations and future research.............................................................................................100
References............................................................................................................................................103
5
Content of figures and tables
Figure 1 A rnstein's ladder ........................................................................................................................
14
Figure 2 Bottom up, top down and crowdsourcing................................................................................
24
Figure 3 Research Road Map ....................................................................................................................
26
Figure 4 Four communities and their locations..................................................................................
27
Figure 5 Information, motivation, and power relation .....................................................................
33
Figure 6 Citizen participation ladders ................................................................................................
33
Figure 7 Entities in participatory planning .........................................................................................
35
Figure 8 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Danwei Housing ................................................
37
Figure 9 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Gated Community...............................................
39
Figure 10 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Urban Village ...................................................
42
Figure 11Community Entities and Focus Topics at Suburban Village ..............................................
43
Figure 12 Information flow at Danwei Housing .................................................................................
46
Figure 13 Incentive Structure at Danwei Housing.............................................................................
47
Figure 14 Power Structure at Danwei Housing .................................................................................
47
Figure 15 Integrated participatory map at Danwei Housing............................................................
48
Figure 16 Information flow at Gated Community...................................................................................
51
Figure 17 Incentive Structure at Gated Community...........................................................................51
Figure 18 Power Structure at Gated Community................................................................................52
Figure 19 Integrated participatory map at Gated Community..........................................................
53
Figure 20 Information flow at Urban Village ......................................................................................
55
Figure 21 Incentive Structure at Urban Village .................................................................................
56
Figure 22 Power Structure at Urban Village ......................................................................................
56
Figure 23 Integrated participatory map at Urban Village.................................................................
57
Figure 24 Information flow at Suburban Village ....................................................................................
60
Figure 25 Incentive Structure at Suburban Village ............................................................................
61
Figure 26 Power Structure at Suburban Village .................................................................................
61
Figure 27 Integrated participatory map at Suburban Village............................................................62
Figure 28 Crowdsourcing's potential in Danwei Housing .................................................................
6
64
Figure 29 Crowdsourcing's potential at Gated Community...............................................................
65
Figure 30 Crowdsourcing's potential at Urban Village .....................................................................
66
Figure 31 Crowdsourcing's potential at Suburban Village ................................................................
67
Figure 32 Photos showing the protest................................................................................................
73
Figure 33 Focus topic evolution in Gated Community Road Widening Case ..................................
74
Figure 34 Ushahidi Platform at Shenzhen...........................................................................................
75
Figure 35 Focus topic evolution in Suburban Village Redevelopment Case ....................................
77
Figure 36 Ladder of Awareness ...........................................................................................................
81
Figure 37 Ladder of Strategy ....................................................................................................................
82
Figure 38 Ladder of O utcom e...................................................................................................................83
Figure 39 Citizen participatory ladders in Chinese regime ..............................................................
84
Figure 40 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-none-inclusive scenario ..................................
86
Figure 41 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-none-openending scenario ..............................
87
Figure 42 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-one scenario.....................................................
88
Figure 43 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-crowd scenario ................................................
89
Figure 44 coUrbanize's main page with projects mapped .................................................................
91
Figure 45 coUrbanize's project discussion forum ...............................................................................
92
Figure 46 Weibo and Douban check-in in Shenzhen (by Qianqian and Liqun)..................................102
Table 1 Summary of Interviews ...............................................................................................................
25
Table 2 Four com m unities........................................................................................................................
27
Table 3 Comparison of four communities ..........................................................................................
31
T ab le 4 C a ses .............................................................................................................................................
32
Table 5 Comparison of four communities and crowdsourcing's potential.......................................
68
Table 6 Resolving restriction on time and space ...............................................................................
92
7
Chapter One
Introduction
1.1. Background and Significance
Urbanization has been a crucial issue and a hot topic for China for decades. However, the
urbanization rate, as a number, doesn't not tell the whole story. The more important question
behind it is how is urbanization happening? Urbanization can on one hand benefit a lot of people
while on the other hand harm even more. It is important to understand how urbanization is
interacted with each single resident or citizen and to understand their role in this mass process.
Under the Chinese regime, the origin of urban planning rooted in the planned-economy regime,
unlike the western ones. It is mainly a tool to help fulfill the "five-year-plan" and relative economic
and social development goals, which is a completely top-down strategy.
This strategy to some extent contributes to China's rapid economic development and urbanization
in the past 30 years, but at the same time, generated and left tons of severe problems in the process
of development: local cultural patterns are not paid any respects, cities are modern but boring and
identical, the vivid sense of places are vanishing, local people are displaced, leading to severe
conflicts and protests. Individual and communities' voices are neglected and they are not part of the
8
planning process nor are they part of the implementation. However, this situation may not last
forever.
As the urbanization increasing rate is slowing down, and big cities are getting more and more
mature, more redevelopment projects, rather than brand new development projects, are taking
place especially in downtown area. Therefore, it is unavoidable that more and more stakeholders
will get involved in planning projects.
On the other hand, the emerging of social media like Weibo (Chinese Twitter), Wechat, etc., enables
individuals to self-broadcast and significantly improve the real-time information transfer, which
exposes planning projects to the public and raises the awareness of participation, civil rights and
consciousness of citizenship that call for participatory planning. In this informational era, taking
public opinions into consideration in planning process is inevitable.
Give the rise of crowdsourcing in many practice areas, planners also started to apply
crowdsourcing in public sector to facilitate participatory planning. It could be a powerful tool to
overcome planner's limits and enable better participatory planning that realize collectiveintelligence and no-expert knowledge in the process of urban planning.
Discussion on crowdsourcing's application in urban planning is yet to be explored, nor had a lot
practices taken place. It is the high time to untangle this concept and its application in planning. In
Chinese regime, especially when community participatory planning is at its initial stage, study on
crowdsourcing participatory planning can be more meaningful.
1.2. Research Questions
The purpose of this research is to untangle the existing community participatory planning modes in
communities in China and discuss the potential of crowdsourcing as a tool for participatory
9
planning in future planning process through case studies, interviews, and focus groups and to study
the information, incentive and power structure of the crowd through crowdsourcing, and carry out
policy analysis. In particular, this research attempts to answer four major groups of questions:
First of all, this research tries to understand the focus topics for each entity in community level
participatory planning in China. What are the major community types and its corresponding
organizational structures? Who are the main players in each scenario? What are the focus issues for
each players and stakeholders and how does information flow in between?
Secondly, this research tempts to construct the institution map for information exchange, incentive
structure and power structure, and more importantly, tries to answer how crowdsourcing
influences and changes the whole picture. Questions include: How information is exchanged
between different entities? How does incentives pass along? What is the power structure? What's
crowdsourcing's role within the whole picture? How can crowdsourcing help align the incentive
and power structure and foster information exchange?
The third trunk of questions associated with crowdsourcing's application mode and its spectrum.
Questions include what's the spectrum of crowdsourcing's application in participatory planning in
different scenarios?
While the forth trunk of questions are associated with the overall different levels of civic
participation in China. What's the ladder for Chinese participatory planning and how does
crowdsourcing move the crowd up the ladder?
Based on the discussion of the above questions, this research will also conduct policy analysis and
discuss implications that can better adapt participatory planning into Chinese regime.
10
Chapter Two
History and Theory of
Participatory Planning, and Crowdsourcing
2.1. History of community participatory planning in China
The origin of urban planning in China rooted in the planned economy: urban planning helps to
fulfill the "five-year-plan" and realize the economic and social development goals. At this stage,
planning is more about the master plan on land development and industrial plan for heavy industry
development and jobs.
Some discussions regarding public participation started from late 1980s and early 1990s. Scholars
started to talk about "public participation" from the perspectives of 1) Learning about grassroots'
demands; 2) Ensuring public interest; 3) Enabling public monitoring; 4) Helping with planning
implementation; These discussions were influenced by western planning theory, especially those
emerging after 1960s.
11
The potential methods being discussed in Chinese regime include 1) planner oriented, in the case
where planners introduce plans to the public, 2) public oriented, in the case where planners send
out questionnaires, interviews, city images, etc.; 3)mutual, in the cases where seminar, games, etc.
are organized to engage planners and residents. In most of the cases, the third scenario does not
happen in between planners and residents. Instead, it is usual for planners, developers and the
government to work together.
With limited discussions on participatory planning issues in China in 80s, there were not many
cases. It is not until 1990s when there began to appear some planning cases that involve public
participation, though most of those only used questionnaires, interviews, and public introduction
etc., which was "planner-oriented".
Along with the rise of internet and information era, some discussion about new modes of
participatory planning started. First of all, the nature of information transparency of on-line posting
is emphasized so that people can get much freer access to the information by doing searches. It is
claimed that the Internet facilitates civil society activities by offering new possibilities for citizen
participation while civil society facilitates the development of the Internet by providing the
necessary social basis for communication and interaction(Yang 2003). Secondly, the technology of
3D modeling, animation and simulation can enable people to understand better about a design and
a plan. It visualized for the public and set up the base line platform for the public to engage in
planning. Moreover, the emergence of new media enables with people to publicize themselves and
it is a new channel to broadcast. Last but not the least, seminar, workshop and public hearing type
of community engagement is also discussed, but even with the assistance from internet, its nature
of experts' game never changed.
12
The current institutional structure also contributes to lack of participatory planning in today's
China. According to the planning law, each level of government is in charge of the approval of the
next level administration region's plan, and there are not many regulatory changes since decades
ago. The complete top-down regime inherited from decades ago are still impeding today's
participatory planning.
To conclude, most of the public participation in China is superficial and is for fulfilling the
requirement under Urban Planning Law. Neither the government not the developers want public
participation to slow down the process. Therefore, participatory planning in China is 1) an
afterthought: there is no effective participation during the planning and design process; 2)
unidirectional: usually the government informs the public; or collect opinions from the public
without any future feedback; 3) passive: no interaction between different players and the sample
evolved are sometimes biased. 4) Not legitimate: it is just a procedure that government has to go
through according to the urban planning law, 5) lacking in the participatory culture: Chinese
culture, different from western culture, grew from the concept of family and collective rather than
individual freedom. Civil right is an unfamiliar concept for most of Chinese citizens.
2.2. Theory of participatory planning and Discussions in China
Participatory planning is a western cultural form that does not really exist in China. In the US, the
greater resident voice in community development programs was stimulated by the negative effects
of many Urban Renewal programs as well as the launch of the war on Poverty in the early 1960s,
with its requirement of "maximum feasible participation" by the poor. The whole process involved
several important figures.
13
The fierce revolt against modern planning started in the 1960s, led by Jane Jacobs, who was a
landmark in both planning history and theory. She attacked the way modern planners looked on
cities: in contrast to a top-down approach. Paul Davidoff (1965) soon argued that planners should
engage as advocates where value is explicit, in a process similar to the due process in law. Susskind
(1989), on the other hand, explores deeper into this very issue of consensus building in planning
process. According to Lawrence Susskind, compromises are not the key to it, nor are elections,
referendums, etc. He asserts that the most effective tools are negotiated approaches to consensus
building, which requires informal, face-to-face interaction among representative of all stakeholding groups. John Forester (1988) also argued for planners as facilitators and communicators,
focusing on the planners' guiding-role in consensus making. Among all, Sherry Arnstein's seminal
1969 paper "a ladder of citizen participation", written during the period of growing interest in
resident participation, has framed much of the subsequent discourse on this topic in the united
stated.
8
Citizen Control
7
Delegation
6
Partnership
5
Placation
4
Consultation
3
Informing
2
Therapy
The ladder challenged activists, planners, and officials to
Citizen Control
reexamine the role residents were playing. However, in the
new information era, Arnstein's ladder is being challenged.
Bratt and Reardon (2013) pointed out several weaknesses,
Tokenism
noting that the ladder assumes only a single form of
participation and that it confused strategy with outcome,
and that the ladder does not take into account how
different voices can be heard, how different racial or ethnic
1
Nonparticipation
Manipulation
identities might influence participation, or how to balance
competing community demands. Most importantly, it doesn't
14
Figure 1 Arnstein's ladder
address the dramatically changing context after 1960s: public-private partnerships, small scale
community Development Corporations, etc.
In the informational era, more discussion are centered on how new technology is applied in public
involvement. Hampton and Wellman are among one of the first to ask the question what the
Internet is doing to local community. It is recognized (Hampton and Wellman 2003) that Not only
did the Internet support neighboring, it also facilitated discussion and mobilization around local
issues. Svara and Denhardt (Svara and Denhardt 2010) noted that examples of participation:
inform, consult, incorporate, collaborate and empower.
It is addressed above that there is almost no actual participatory planning in China. Different from
the western discussions on drawbacks of implementation of participatory planning, researches in
China are in a stage of understanding the political regime and learning how to work with it.
Based on this current condition, many Chinese scholars do realize the disadvantages brought by
lack of participatory planning. It is not only simply an issue of democracy and citizen right, it leads
to more severe problems such as 1) obstruction of planning implementation and in some cases, it
even brings up severe conflicts between local residents and the government; 2) the last mile failure
in planning that it may not fulfill local residents demand; 3) and Cities will get more and more
identical and lose their unique cultural patterns and diverse urban activities;
Moreover, lack of public participation accelerates the planning implementation process and brings
up issues like rapid urban sprawl. More land is leased and developed in the massive urbanization
process. Development quality and human-concern is overlooked and jeopardies individuals'
interest, especially the minority, low-income and migrant population.
15
There are researches focusing on specific cases but most of them are concerning about
participatory politics at village or township level since the land is collectively owned and villagers
naturally have the negotiation power in participatory events. It is recognized that local levels of
government actually exhibit a high degree of autonomy: much of the community participation
developed and implemented in contemporary China is directed by county, township and village
leaders, and is influenced disproportionately by elite village groups(Plummer and Taylor 2004).
Participatory topics are usually over natural resources rather planning and construction. The
objectives includes sustainability, empowerment, accountability, project effectiveness, conflict
resolution, and community capacity development. Janelle Plummer and John G Taylor (2004),
basing on their research on village participatory events, constructed a ladder of community
participation in china: from Notification, attendance, expression, to discussion, decision-making and
initiative/self-management.
In urban area, discussion on participatory planning still stays at a superficial level. Relevant
discovers includes the findings of erosion of Danwei system and the shift for individuals from
Danwei person to Community person (Li and Chen, 2008), which may trigger a chain reaction of life
style change, including how people interact with public issues. Problems and pitfalls of
participation are also discussed in Chinese regime, including the masquerade of participation,
imposed participation, involuntary participation, manipulative participation, poor quality
facilitation, etc.
2.3. Crowdsourcing in public sector
Crowdsourcing, i.e. outsourcing to the crowd, is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or
content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online
community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers (wikipedia). It is enabled by
16
widespread and increasing access to the Internet, mobile phones, and related communication
technologies, as well as participatory culture (Brabham 2013). Brabham defines in his book that
crowdsourcing is an online, distributed problem solving and production model that leverages the
collective intelligence of online communities to serve specific organizational goals. He also makes it
clear that only the deliberate blend of bottom-up, open, creative process with top-down
organizational goals is called crowdsourcing: components are 1) an organization that has a task it
needs performed, 2) a community (crowd) that is willing to perform the task voluntarily, 3) an
online environment that allow the work to take place and the community to interact with the
organization, 4) mutual benefit for the organization and the community.
Crowdsourcing's power was first demonstrated by the ability of the open-source movement to
successfully compete with traditional solutions (Bott and Young 2012). Though starting from
business and private sector, there is an increasing discussion about the use of crowdsourcing in
public sector, for policy advocacy, e-government, and e-democracy during the past decade. (Bott
and Young 2012). Seltzer and Mahmoudi (2013) also observe that although crowdsourcing and
open innovation are largely associated with private sector innovation processes that is changing
rapidly as new applications are being made in communities for community purposes. Vreede et al.
(2013) concludes that social media technology has enabled virtual collaborative environments
where people actively interact, share knowledge, coordinate activities, solve problems, co-create
value, and innovate.
First of all, low transaction cost and information sharing is one of the first important features for
crowdsourcing. By reducing the transaction costs of information exchange, group forming, and
coordination, information become more and more transparent. It has become much more difficult
for governments to block information and stifle collaboration, and political opposition can now
17
manifest itself without the formation of traditional institutions. In addition, when used to collect
information, it can be seen as a methodology for non-probability sampling (Brabham, 2013). The
right combination of social networking tools and an active audience allows any individual to inspire
and coordinate collective action outside of a formal hierarchy.
Based on that, civic participation becomes one of the fields that crowdsourcing usually plugs in.
Bott and Young (2012) acknowledge the use of crowdsourcing in tracking flows of aid, reporting on
poor government performance, and helping to organize grassroots movements and that
crowdsourcing has potential to change the reality of civic participation in many developing
countries.
Relating back to participatory planning, Hampton and Wellman (2003) defines participation is the
act of creating new knowledge, contributing new perspectives to the planning process, and
diffusing knowledge to others in the process. Brabham (2009) argues that the crowdsourcing
model, a successful, Web-based, distributed problem solving and production model for business, is
an appropriate model for enabling the citizen participation process in public planning projects.
Crowdsourcing enables collective knowledge and powers community building, which are also
crucial components in participatory planning. Evans-Cowley (2010) notes that City and regional
planning is a perfect discipline for crowdsourcing since it is a problem-identify and solutions
finding process. She identifies crowdsourcing as a means for surveying the public in a manner that
allows them to see the ideas as they are put forth, thereby increasing the transparency of the
surveying process.
Since 'no one knows everything, everyone knows something, [and] all knowledge resides in
humanity' (Levy, 1995/1997: 13-14), it is acknowledged by scholars that non-expert knowledge
is important for creative problem solving process of planning. Van Herzele (2004) found that
18
inclusion of non-expert knowledge was beneficial to the planning process in general, since the
perspectives of individuals outside of the professional bubble of urban planning can (re)discover
creative solutions that could work in a specific local context.
Another aspect is crowd wisdom: people become collectively smarter. James Surowiecki (2005)
examines several cases of crowd wisdom at work, where the very success of a solution is dependent
on its emergence from a large body of solvers'. Based on several empirical investigations,
Surowiecki (2005) finds that 'under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and
are often smarter than the smartest people in them'. This wisdom of crowds is derived not from
averaging solutions, but from aggregating them. Seltzer and Mahmoudi (2013) also acknowledge
that the key technique for open innovation is "crowdsourcing," issuing a challenge to a large and
diverse group in hopes of arriving at new solutions more robust than those found inside the
organization.
Beside the changes of application of crowdsourcing in different fields, crowdsourcing is also grows
from developed country to developing countries (Bott and Young 2012). Its impact in developing
countries including application to crisis and tactical mapping;8 tracking, reporting on, or
coordinating relief efforts in the contexts of natural disasters (e.g., Haiti, Pakistan) and civil wars
(e.g., Libya); or tracking human rights abuses and violence (e.g., Kenya). By providing visualizations
and monitoring implementation of relief and recovery efforts, allowing for wide dissemination of
weather and crop market price information (e.g., Mali, Uganda), crowdfunding microcredit (e.g.,
Kiva.org), and so on, crowdsourcing is being applied in multiple ways within the context of
international development.
19
Vreede et al. (2013) identify three critical elements that precede crowdsourcing user engagement:
personal interest in topic, goal clarity, and motivation to contribute. There is also research studying
people's motivation of contributing to OpenStreetMap (Budhathoki and Haythornthwaite 2013).
However, some major drawbacks of crowdsourcing is also discussed by scholars who call for
cautioning against participation. First of all, it is not well developed. According to Brabham , "Up to
a point, crowdsourcing the public participation process for this hypothetical neighborhood
development does not seem very different from participatory land-use mapping (Di Gessa, 2008;
Randolph, 2004), participatory 3-D modeling, 'chip games', PPGIS, or Web-based urban
information-gathering networks (Sotarauta, 2001) and mapping activities (Kingston, 2007) . It is
the process whereby the everyday citizens who design solutions also vet those solutions that makes
crowdsourcing distinct from these other methods". Among his four types of crowdsourcing
application (knowledge discover and management, broadcast search, peer-vetted creative
production, and distributed human-intelligence tasks), only peer-vetted creative production can be
apply to urban planning, which is demonstrated by his Next Stop Design project which launched in
2009.
Moreover, a counter body of literature emerged citing local exceptions and small scale public
participation failures based on specific cases and long-range studies. Problems include not enough
active crowd involved, difficulties for NGOs and social entrepreneurs to launch a crowdsourcing
initiative, crowd being manipulated and ineffectiveness in crowdsourcing process, etc. Moreover,
crowdsourcing is only the first step toward better results. It is more important to understand how
that data is being used to hold those in power accountable.
In addition, difference between private and public sectors are also discussed. Brabham (2013)
outline some of the notable cases of crowdsourcing, all of which are for-profit business cases, such
20
as peer-production. However, rules in private sectors may not apply in public sectors, especially in
community planning regimes. Seltzer and Mahmoudi (2013) discover that 1)firms and planning
agencies are not the same thing, since planning is portrayed as a network based activity, much as
open innovation pursued through crowdsourcing is portrayed as a means for engaging a diverse
and heretofore diffuse crowd and the knowledge and creativity of crowd "members." 2) Citizen
Participation and crowdsourcing share some but not all of the same aims. And 3) By depending on a
well-developed problem statement, crowdsourcing as a technique can arise in direct conflict with
the expectation that citizen participation is, in fact, the process through which problems are
identified, visions crafted, and goals and objectives specified.
2.4. Things yet to be explore
There are plenty of papers centered on the topic of community participatory planning since 1960
from different perspectives. However, just as Bratt and Readon had pointed out, social changes are
so huge that traditional participatory planning theories may no longer hold. Bratt and Reardon
(2013) broadened the resident participation framework and integrate several new categories that
explicitly focus on direct and indirect bottom-up resident strategies in the updated "ladder".
Environment context is also taken into consideration: each of the scenario in hostile environment,
challenging environment and supportive environment are discussed. However, seldom do
community participatory planning papers address issues such as crowdsourcing. Bratt and
Reardon's analysis is still done in a traditional context with more consideration of various context.
It is an extension of Arnstein's ladder but not a new one that speaks to new technology and social
order.
On the crowdsourcing side, more researches are focus on the potential advantages of
crowdsourcing in planning and types of application in planning, but not specific case studies in
21
specific context. "Next stop design" that is raised by Brabham is one of the few cases from the
literature but it is entirely a virtual experiment. Without specific contexts and on-field solid
understanding of the power dynamic of participatory planning in informational era,
crowdsourcing's application in urban planning still remain further exploration.
Moreover, almost no related researches are done in Chinese regime. Given the fact that social media
is getting more and more prevalent, the increasing number of redevelopment project and the rise of
civic consciousness, participatory planning is a doomed trend, and crowdsourcing will be one of the
key approach. It is the high time to explore this crowdsourcing's application in community
participatory planning in China.
Therefore, this research will contribute to the interdisciplinary research on crowdsourcing and
participatory planning by on site case studies, and reveals the issue in Chinese regime.
22
Chapter Three
Research design
3.1. Definition of crowdsourcing
In most of the previous researches, crowdsourcing is defined as an online-only method. However,
planning's nature of space-based indicates that crowdsourcing cannot be a virtual only process.
Crowdsourcing is a not an end per se, but a means. In addition, the key character for crowdsourcing
is essentially about outsourcing to the crowd and foster the problem-solving process within crowd.
Crowdsourcing can have a variety of applications in different field and therefore in this research, I
would like to extend the definition for crowdsourcing: crowdsourcing is a non-sampled, all invited,
internet triggered, top-down and bottom up out sourcing process in which peers communicates
with each other and come out with one solution or distributed solutions, responding to each other
or to a certain authority.
23
Z, j36,
0
0
am
Figure 2 Bottom up, top down and crowdsourcing
In participatory planning context, the traditional top-down inform or notice is not a kind of
crowdsourcing. Nor does survey or interview a kind of crowdsourcing since the crowd are not
engaged with each other.
Only when the problem is taken by the crowd and the crowd are engaging with each other is the
process called crowdsourcing.
3.2. Methodology
This is a qualitative based study. Methods include interview, focus group study and case studies.
Interviews were conducted through face to face, phone and online communication. The average
duration for each residents is 15 minutes. Interviews with people from owner's committee,
Residents' committee and village committee is around 20 minutes each, interviews with
developers, government agents and planners are around 40 minutes each. All interviews are
conducted during jan.2014 to Apr. 2014.
Interviewees are people from different entities in all four communities. Interviews include general
interviews, community specific interview and case specific interviews (see next section for site and
case study introductions). General interviews involve people who are not specifically tied to any
type of communities, while community specific interviews are tied to each of the four types of
24
communities. Case specific interviews and focus group study went with two case studies at a gated
community and a suburban village where two planning projects are going on.
Two focus group studies involves respectively 429 (road widening case at gated community) and
56 persons (suburban redevelopment at Jiaochangwei). The focus group for Gated community was
traced from early February to late April for this thesis and focus group for suburban community
was traced from mid-January to late April for the thesis. Both focus groups are still followed up to
present.
Here is the summary of interview and focus group studies:
Table 1 Summary of Interviews
cases
Danwei
Gated
Urban
Suburban
housing
communit
village
village
general
total
(case2)
y(casel)
focus group
0
1(429)
0
1(56)
NA
2
residents/tenants
6
13
7
10
NA
36
2
2
owner's
village
committee
committee/
resident
committee
development
NA
2
11
1
NA
2
2
4
3
NA
NA
NA
7
developer
NA
NA
NA
NA
2
2
evaluation organization
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
0
government/affiliated
NA
1
1
3
5
10
planner/designer
NA
2
2
3
10
17
total
14
23
12
17
17
83
corporation
property management
company
25
The overall roadmap for this research is indicated by this diagram. Interviews, focus group case
studies lead to the analysis regarding to the research questions.
S.I
tol
4
different entities
different entities
different entities
different entities
community type 1]
community type 2
community type 3
community type 4
1
case study 1
focus topics
case study 2
information flow
incentive structure
power structure
crowdsourcing
civic participation
specturm
ladder
crowdsourcing's potential
crowdsourcing's influence
Figure 3 Research Road Map
3.3. Sites and community type
This research selected four sites in Shenzhen as study areas, respectively representing Danwei
housing, Gated Community, urban village, and suburban village. Interviews are conducted
associated with the four communities.
26
........
Figure 4 Four communities and their locations
Table 2 Four communities
Yijingyuan (YYJ)
Jindi Tennis
LingBei (LB)
Jiaochangwei (JCW)
urban village in center
urban village at edge
Center(JTC)
Danwei Housing
Gated community
There are a variety of community types in China. According to its location in urban area and it
property ownership and institutional structure, there are mainly four types in Shenzhen: 1) Danwei
Housing, 2) Gated Community, 3) Urban villages and 4) Suburban villages. There are certainly many
27
more types of communities in Shenzhen and other cities, such as Hutong-courtyards, dorms, etc.,
but this paper will focus on the major four.
3.3.1. Danwei Housing
Danwei housing is a heritage from planned economy when state-owned company was in charge of
the accommodation of their own employee. Danwei housing are usually just next to the working
place, which means they usually located in a relative central location. It is a unique culture that in
Danwei Housing neighborhood, all basic daily services are equipped and people know each other.
Since Danwei housing is one of the first modern type of community in China, most of the Danwei
neighborhoods are also relatively old. Yijingyuan, the Danwei housing case study site, located in
the most popular commercial zone in Shenzhen, long the main boulevard Shennan Road. It was
constructed in 1980s along with CEIEC (one of the first company settled down in Shenzhen), went
through marketization in late 1990s, and underwent a severe hybridization in early 2000s when
more and more urban migrants or business people moved in. Most Danwei Housings are now
handed over to property management companies and residents' committee.
Although Danwei housing is same as other market housing in gated communities from the market
point of view, they are significantly different in terms of tenant ratio, organization structure, etc. It
is estimated by Yijingyuan property management company that original house owners who still
own the property are up to 65% while original house owners who still live there drops to less than
30%. The whole majority of residents in the neighborhood experienced a process of hybridization.
3.3.2. Gated Community
Gated community started after the commercialization of housing market. Apartment in gated
communities are also known as commercial units since they are at full market price. Gated
28
communities are generally newer than Danwei houses, equipping with better security systems, and
all of them are run by property management companies. One unique character reflected from the
interviews are that people in gated communities do not communicate with each other, or even don't
know who their neighbors are before using online social media.
Gated community is fully managed by property management companies and the owners' committee
usually have the bargain power with property management companies. It is the owners' committee
who hire the property management company. However, every single residents are still registered
under residential committee though many residents reflected that they are not registered under the
residential committee where they are living right now. The whole system is not updated.
Jindi Tennis center, the case for gated community, is opened to the market in 2004. It locates to
the north of New Futian central business district within 10 minutes' walk to a subway station.
The institutional structure in Danwei community and gated community are similar, but the
demographic pattern is different. According to the management company, 70% of residents in JTC
are owners.
3.3.3. Urban Village
Urban villages result from the rapid urban sprawl that urban construction and development took
place around the original villages. As the land prices went up, people in those villages started to
build more buildings or add more floors to collect rents.
Very much different from the about two kinds of communities, urban villages are not considered as
urban land. Land in urban villages are rural land which is collectively owned, rather than state
owned. Buildings in urban villages usually do not meet the regulations. Urban villages have for long
been a problem for municipal government since it is hard to manage the population, crime issues.
29
More importantly, urban villages causes criminal and healthy issues. But due to the fact that the
village own the property right collectively, the government cannot take over the land easily.
In Urban Villages, there are two types of tenants: short term tenants and long tern tenant. Long
term tenants are usually first hand tenant who rent the unit directly from the landlord. Short term
tenants can be first hand tenants or secondary tenants who rent the unit from a long term first hand
tenants. In the study side Lingbei village, it is reported by the residents that nearly 40% of the
tenants are second-hand tenants (tenants' tenants). Landlords consist less than one sixth of total
population. Many long-term tenants will rent their spare units to others.
3.3.4. Suburban Village
Suburban villages are a relatively new term. From administrative management and property rights
point of view, suburban villages are just the same as urban villages: land in suburban villages is
collectively owned by the villagers and they are considered as rural construction land.
However, the difference in location does distinguish them. First of all, the demographic group is
entirely different: more landlords live in suburban villages and there are barely no second hand
tenants. Moreover, the land value is not as high as urban villages in good locations so they face
more threats of demolition. In addition, their function is also different: house owners in suburban
villages may have more choices. While in city center urban villages are rented mostly to migrate
workers, at suburban villages, houses may rent for tourism purposes.
In the case in Jiaochangwei, a village locate along west seashore of Shenzhen, house owners rent
the house and operate weekend hotels. The entrepreneurship makes public participation mode in
this type of community unique and yet different from the above three. More will be discussed in the
later chapters.
30
Table 3 Comparison of four communities
CASE
YIJING
JINDI*
LINGBEI
JIAOCHANGWEI*
TYPE
Danwei Housing
Gated
Urban Village
Suburban Village
Community
LAND VALUE
High
High
High
Low
HOUSE VALUE
Medium
High
Low
High (considered
as cultural value)
LOCATION
Good
Sub-central
Good
Suburban
LAND RIGHT
State owned
State owned
Collectively
Collectively owned
owned
PROPERTY
legal
legal
illegal
illegal
high
low
Very high
high
Business
White collar
Long-term
Hotel managers
people, urban
workers
Short term
RIGHT
TENANT/OWNER
RATIO
TENANT TYPE
Low-income
migrant
urban migrants
(* has case study associated with this kind of community)
3.4. Case study selection
Beside four sites, this research also involves two on-going planning project as case studies. The two
cases are two different types of planning projects in different types of communities.
The first one is a road-widening project adjacent to a gated community. This is a project that "run"
three rounds of public outreach, receiving no objections but got severe protest as soon as the
construction started. Crowdsourcing is involved during and after the protest. The second project is
a suburban village redevelopment project. Instead of demolishing all buildings and replacing by
brand new development, the government invited architects and residents working together to
figure out the final detailed redevelopment plan. In this whole process, each house owner is in
31
charge of their own land slot's redevelopment. Crowdsourcing is involved in the decision making
process.
Table 4 Cases
COMMUNITY
PROJECT TYPE
TYPE
CASE1
CASE2
Gated
Transportation:
community
road widening
Suburban
Housing:
village
suburban
LAND
CROWDSOURCING
CROWDSOURCING
PROJECT
TYPE
INVOLVED
ORGANIZATION
AFFECTS
Urban
Post-construction
Self-organized
Public
property
Rural
Pre-construction
Government
Collectively
mediated
owned
village upgrade
property
This two case studies are selected because 1) both of them involved community participation, 2)
they are on-going project, and 3) they each associate with one type of community, one type of
project type, land type, ownership structure and the different approach of crowdsourcing.
The two project types are different which makes them hard to compare. However, the differences
indicate the differences between urban communities and urban village communities. These two
projects can actually represent the most typical planning projects that happen in those
communities respectively.
3.5. Theoretical Framework
Theoretical framework of this research are two folds.
First framework provides analytical perspectives from information exchange, incentive structure
and power structure, which try to reveal and explain why in certain circumstances and in certain
32
entities information exchange is positive while in others it is negative. This framework also helps to
explain crowdsourcing's influences and application in the whole participatory mechanism. The
framework is based on the institutional roadmap for all entities that involve in the participation
process.
ptivate
C
information
publi-Emknation
Figure 5 information, motivation, and power relation
The second framework is an overall view of civic participation in Chinese regime, involved by
Arnstein's idea of ladder. In order to avoid the existing flaws of Arnstein's ladder, this research use
ladder of civic awareness, ladder of strategy and ladder of outcome to explain in depth Chinese civic
participation status, revealing how bottom-up and top-down forces meet each other, and more
importantly how crowdsourcing helps move up the ladder.
awarenes
strategy
outcome
Figure 6 citizen participation ladders
33
Chapter Four
From Focus Topic to
Information, Incentive and Power structure:
Crowdsourcing's Potential
This chapter will untangle the existing entities in four different types of communities, their
corresponding focus topic regarding planning project and more importantly, the whole picture of
institutional structure. Institutional structure is further broken down into three dimensions: 1)
information flow which represents the outcome a communication and participation, 2) incentives
structure which may include market incentives, pilot incentives, promotion incentives, etc.; and 3)
power structure which may work with or against incentive structure. And incentives and power
will determine the information flow pattern.
There are mis-matches in focus topics across different entities and dis-connection in information
flow, incentives structures and power structures which explain why even in some cases the
government and the crowd is willing to participate, civic participation does not take place.
34
Crowdsourcing can be a great add-on component to the whole picture of institutional structure.
This chapter will discuss crowdsourcing' influence on certain link and nodes in the institutional
structure and its potential to contribute to participatory planning.
4.1. Entities and Focus Topic
It is found out that all entities can be grouped into four of five: 1) Residents, including owners and
tenants; 2) the owners committee or village committee, development corporation, hotel
association; 3) resident committee, property management company, or Shenzhen Center for Design
who coordinate in between; 4) planning institute, evaluation organization, and developer, investor;
5) the ultimate decision maker, the government. Not every community has the whole group of
entities or stakeholders above, but at least has one or two in each category. More importantly, each
entity in each community may focus on different topics.
PUBLIC
PRIVATE
Owners
Tenants
v
ommitte
Development cooperation
eation
T duetelmt o
ResIdents committee
developer
prperty management company planning institution
evaluation orgainzation
Government affliated NPO
Government
Figure 7 Entities in participatory planning
The legend for the focus topic diagrams are presented below: blue indicates more private or
internal topics such as parking issues, community environment, etc., which are more daily routine,
not related to the planning project.; Red indicated project oriented focus topics.
* owner
operator
tenants
o
Internal and community affairs
Entity associated with community
Project, participation affaris
Entity associated with government
35
4.1.1. Danwei Housing
In general, tenants cares mostly about rent price and fees, parking and accessibility issues.
"This is a really old neighborhood and there is not enough parking lots." (D-R1)
"The street outside is narrowand my car alwaysjammed there."(D-R2)
"I care about the price. It kept rising and I will consider to move out if it gets any higher.But I
have a one year contractso it is fine."(D-R4)
This reflect that they cares more about accessibility issue rather than inner environment, which
means they value more about the location.
"Irent it here because it is near to my shop in Huaqiangbei."(D-R6)
On the other hand, house owners care more about the surroundings urban functions,
neighborhood environment that may affect the value of their apartment.
"I no longerlive here but I hope the property management company can do a betterjob to
make the neighborhood tidy. It is such a mess! Not like severalyears ago." (D-02)
"I hope I can raise the rent nextyear.All the surrounding rental price aregoing up!" (D-03)
"I don't know what is happening thisyears...the whole districtis getting worse and worse. I
would like to see some big and nice shopping malls" (D-01)
The owner's committee is loose that they only have regular meetings to discuss the issues such as
setting Management Company fee.
36
"We usuallyjustfocus on the property managementcompany and whether thefee is
reasonable.We don't do that often." (D-OB1)
On resident committee side, they care about "harmony" and resolve conflicts. Participation is part
of their job but not the core task.
Property management company's routine jobs including collect report and problems from tenants
and house owners and solve them, making profit from management fee and maintain good
reputation among residents to ensure they will be hired by the residents again.
"My boss emphasizes a lot on our service standard.But since we are runningproperty
management by ourselves [the developer and the property management company is the same
one], we are not under too much pressure.[ofbeing fired by the owner's board]"(D-PM01)
Developer and Government are usually together in a revitalization project. Since there is no ongoing revitalization project, this research didn't interviewed developers and government. However,
according to the resident committee, government and developers emphasis on cost-benefit.
Projects might be cancelled if it cost too much and can't get instant benefit. Thought the
government are usually pursue for urban beauty (General-Government-1), they need the support
from developers.
Environment
Rental Price
District Revitalizati
Planning Proposal
Client relationship
Plain
*e
0000
Rental Price
Parking
Accessibility
Monitor
Maintainence Fee
I
Owners Committee
Maintainence and Management
Maintainence Fee
Minimize Complains
a
itute
Efficienc
Prfi yude
Profit
cD
Resident Committee
Resolve and report conflicts
Information collection
Distribute notice
14-irmn
Evaluation Organizatio
Client relationship
Evaluation Outcome
Figure 8 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Danwei Housing
37
ky
Minim :e conflict
Budget
mentfPlanning Bureau
Govem
4.1.2. Gated Community
Unlike the relative high ratio of tenants in Danwei housing, gated community usually has a lower
tenant's rate. Therefore, residents as house owners, have more concerns in the following issues
according to interviews and focus groups: Parking, management fee, physical environment
(clean, tidy, health, plants), safety and security issues and surrounding daily services.
"so many parking spaces are leased out by the property management company in a untransparentway, how can we even find a place to park our cars?!"(G-R1)
"No body taken care of the rubbish and the broken roads?"(G-R2)
"The roadoutside is too wide, not safe for my kids." (G-R5)
"Doyou know how many points [a point-collectingprimaryschool lottery system]? I need to let
my children to go that school?" (G-R3)
The owner's committee, same as in Danwei neighborhood, has the right hire or fire the current
property management company and are elected to represent all house owners. But not all members
in the committee are active in public affairs.
"They are so quietfor such a long time...I don't know how they are elected" (G-R7)
Gated communities are all covered by Resident Committee, whose responsibilities are population
registration and other administrative affairs. But in many cases, people buy the house and live here
do not necessarily register in the Resident committee where they locate. Neither do residents
interact with Resident committee often. The influence of Resident committee on gated community
are limited. The only thing Resident committee is interacting is the reelection of a new owners
committee need Resident committee approval.
38
"I even don't know where Juweihui[resident'scommittee] is..." (G-R3)
"Ionly went there once to get my marriagecertificate.That's all." (G-R8)
"Iknow we need to go throughJuweihui [resident'scommittee]fora new owners committee if
we do anotheraroundof election." (G-R1 0)
Property Management company in gated community usually provides a better service for residents
and the fee is significantly higher than the average level at Danwei neighborhood. Property
Management Company in gated community aim at profit as well, concern about management fee
and complaint on their services.
"We collect [repair]reportsfrom residentsand we have different teams to solve the problems
such as water leaking, elevator malfunction, etc." (G-PM1)
Developer/government are again tie up. The government hopes to solve the problem of congestion
within a limit budget and the developer partners with the government.
"We are very concerned about the congestion. There will be more development on the north
end and if we don't widen the bottle net, the limited capacity will be an even more severe
problem in the future." (G-G1)
Environment
Parking
Security and Safey
Education
00
0O
Planning Proposal
Client relationship
Monitor
Maintainence Fee
Maintainence and Management
Profit (Maintainence Fee)
Minimize Complains
Owners Committee
M
00'o
stitutearmony
Developer
ent Com
Distribute notice
0
Planning
Efficiency
Profit
Minimize conflict
Budget: PPP
Government/Planning Bureau
Client relationship
Resident committee
Evaluation Organization
Client relationship
Evaluation Outcome
Figure 9 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Gated Community
39
4.1.3. Urban Village
In the following cases in urban villages and suburban villages, things are different given the fact
that village committee collectively own the land. In urban villages, the majority of residents are
tenants, and they are mostly low income urban migrants.
Long term tenants behaved more like a landlord. They are sensitive with any changes that may
affect the price. On the other hand, they are also concerned with demolition. Most of them express
their willingness to stay longer.
"Ihave lived herefor 18years.My son and my daughterare both born here and now they went
back to my city. We have a really good relationshipwith the landlord." (U-L T1)
"This is a really spacious room and brings us a lot of money. We two live in the living room."
(U-LT2)
"Many students will come and live here. We welcome them especially in winter break because
we will go back to our hometown and this room will be empty." (U-LT3)
Short term tenants are more concern about the location and affordability of daily services and in
general not interested in participating. They are the most vulnerable to any changes and thus they
are flexible enough to adjust themselves.
"I don't know how longerI will stay here. Hopefully this whole comingyear. But I am looking
for anotherjoband may move out." (U-ST3)
"The foremost two reasonsare that this is near to my work place and really convenient to get
these things cheap." (U-ST3)
40
Landlords are a small group in the village but the most powerful ones. They are extremely sensitive
to any information about demolition and compensation. They also care about public environment
as they will ask their tenants to keep public area clean.
"We share information about demolition.Asfar as I know, we aresafe. [No demolition plan]"
(U-L T1)
"In thefuture, [if they want to demolish] the government need to pay us a really really huge
amount of money." (U-L T2)
"I really hate that people who make the staircaseand hallway a mess. And those who throw
rubbish every in the street." (U-L T3)
Although there are pilot projects that equip urban villages with property Management Company,
most of urban villages are still not covered by property Management Company, including Lingbei
Village. The village committee, however, is an effective organization. Although they do not usually
have regular meetings, they are aware of the fact that when any development are coming in, they
should defend for themselves. Village committee in urban village are the counterpart of the
combination of owners committee, resident committee and property management in urban
communities.
"We are acting as a whole to defendfor our own benefit." (U-VC1)
Again, developer and government are tied up. They want to minimize any relocation cost and
minimize the protests and conflicts. It is really hard for government to carry forward revitalization
project in urban villages. In some successful cases, village committee formed a community
development corporation, collaborated with government, co-developed the land and get a share.
41
"Itis really hard to deal with urban villages. They askedfor millions and we cannot afford it
That's the main reason why we leave them there." (U-G1)
"We are actually concernedabout the floating population,the crime rateand any
undergroundactivities.It is really hard to manage." (U-G1)
"Ofcourse, urban villages are ugly and are not equipped with civil infrastructure.We want to
make our city cleanerand prettier."(U-G2)
Environment
Rental price
Potential action from the government
and compensation
an opnainLeasing
g
Property Management
01800Minimize
Development Copoeration
000
Social welfare
Client relationship
Harmony
Economic development
Planning Institute
Revenue and Budget
Govenment/Planning Bureau
dQo
0(19
Location
Affordable daily services
conflict
Village Commitee
Developer
Efficiency
Profit
Maintanence and Management
Distribute information
Figure 10 Community Entities and Focus Topics at Urban Village
4.1.4. Suburban Village
In Jiaochangwei (JCW) suburban villages, typical tenants are hotel managers. Tenants and landlords
rely on the revenue from beach tourists and their small inns in the houses. Profit is their top
priority and the weekend tourists are increasing. Though tenants and landlords do support
revitalization, they don't want their house to be removed. Besides, they will calculate the costbenefit of revitalization to make sure it within the budget.
"Iwill definitely refuse to move. "(V-01)
"Revitalizationis good. I agree my house is too old and not attractive.But I need a good design
and an affordableprice to renew it." (V-LT1)
42
Village committees in suburban village is similar as the urban village one: they represent land
owner's need. In this specific case, they initiated a hotel association (HA) to negotiate with
government.
"Ourleaderknew a lot of people, including those in the government"(V-VC1)
"We trust him and our hotel industry must survive." (V-HAl)
As has mentioned above, government in urban renewal cases has to take cost-benefit into
consideration. Another major concern for local governments are pursuing innovation and the
desire to launch a "pilot project", "pilot mode".
"We abandonedthe idea of removal because our new districthead stepped up and he made the
decision. But the rooted reason is that we don't have enough money to make it happen." (V-G2)
"We want to be the pilot!This is a new mode." (V-Gl)
"We are trying this as risk since all these buildingsare literatelyillegal." (V-Gl)
Shenzhen Center for Design (SZDC) is the government affiliated no-profit organization who acts as
a coordinator. They are value-neutral and trying to reach out to as many entity as possible.
"This projectstartedall in a sudden. We rushed to contact house owners,recruitarchitects.It
has been a busy andfruitful month." (V-SZDC2)
Rental price
demolition
Lobby
Coordination
Industropratoniion
S0 0
0 0b
le
00 0
Coordination
hezen Center for Design
Social welfare
Client relationship
Planner/Architects
and perfit
Fn- -p-
Investors
Village Committee
representative of villagers
Efficiency
Profit
Harmony
Redvelopment
Economic development
Figure 11Community Entities and Focus Topics at Suburban Village
43
]
Govenment/Planning Bureau
Minimize conflict
Revenue and budget
innovation
The above discussion of focus topic of each players within four communities are revealed either on
physical platform or virtual platform, from in person interview and virtual focus group.
From focus topic point of view, there are mis-matches between public end and private end, which
make them lack of a common base to communicate. In most of the redevelopment cases, local
resident cares about more personal issues and internal issues which directly affect themselves
while the government cares about providing public good which might not have enough influence on
the individuals or which might jeopardize individual's benefits. For resident, they are more willing
to participate when the project has a higher impact on their private property. In the scenario where
concerns are not aligned, a better communication mechanism is needed for both sides to
understand each other's needs and vision.
4.2. Information, Incentive and Power structure
A healthy participatory mechanism is defined by three elements: information, incentive, and
power. These three structures contribute together to participatory planning, working toward or
against one direction. For instance, without incentive and power, information flow can be invalid
and ineffective; with only power, there might not be enough incentive to conduct participation
planning. With only incentive, certain entity may not be able to authorize to collect and report
information. Sometimes, power and incentive even works in the opposite way when the
government has power over the developer and asked the developer to conduct public outreach, the
developer carried out "so-called outreach" and concludes quickly to government that the project is
clear to launch.
This session is trying to analyze information, incentive and power structure in four scenarios with
four types of communities.
44
4.2.1. Danwei Housing
In Danwei housing, tenants interact more with property Management Company reporting problems
such as leaking, broken pavement, etc., Owners and the owner's committee acts more like a
monitor. Among owners, tenants, owner's committee and property management company, the
information is usually well shared except between owner's committee and tenants. Also, the
information feedback mechanism works well.
"There are so many problems here...this is a really old building,always leaking in a rain. I will
told the property management company and also my landlord." (D-01)
"We have owner's committee meetings but not necessarily we all need to show up." (D-03)
On the other end, government, developers and planning institutions also collaborate and
communicate well since they have aligned interest and strong mutual benefits.
However, in terms of participatory planning, it is part of the government's wish to implement the
project smoothly and the resident committee who represents the government is in charge of
spreading and collecting information. In Danwei housing case, only physical methods are used:
putting out notices, setting up booth, etc. However, since most of the house owners are not living
there and tenants care more about location rather than further development, usually few valuable
information is collected.
"We occasionallyhave this table and booth to listen to our residents." (D-RC2)
"We are here to collectfeedback on behalfof the project team." (D-RC1)
"I never stopped by the booth...people who sit there seems not working." (D-R1)
45
"I usually don't know what is going on. Unless they are not rising the [management]fee,I am
generallyfine." (D-R2)
Informational structure:
Planning Institute
b
O 0000
Oo0CC
ZI__
Resident Committee
<
<
Developer
Management Company
OnersCommitte
-
-
Government/Planning Bureau
Organization
vaation
Eauo
Oranzaio__
> information flow regarding internal affairs
> information flow regarding planning projects
Figure 12 Information flow at Danwei Housing
*
Residents and tenants report repair/maintenance request to the Management Company and
also have some information exchange with resident committee through the booth.
*
Owners and owner committee negotiate with the management company and also have a
generally good communication.
*
The government contracts with developer who contracts with an evaluation organization.
The organization reaches out to resident committee asking them collect feedback.
*
Resident committee reach out to individuals and Management Company and the
information circle broke.
Incentive structure
Planning
Insti
00-0-
0
00 Q
0
-000
Resident Committeel
Evaluation Organization
3-incentive to participate with
-----46
Figure 13 Incentive Structure at Danwei Housing
*
From government point of view, they hope they can learn more about residents' opinion.
But they want to keep that in some extend that will not impede the project implementation.
*
Developer's incentive is to get the project down without breaking any regulation. They have
to do community outreach but they are not fully incentivized.
*
The evaluation organization is not fully incentivized to collect public opinions either.
"
From Management Company's point of view, public outreach is not part of their
responsibilities.
Power structure
Planning Institute
*0**00
T
o
Or000 0
Management Company
Developer
4'+3overment/Plamn
g urau
Ower CosimmiCtteet
Resident Committee
mu...
Evaluation Organizationj
power over
power over
*weak
Figure 14 Power Structure at Danwei Housing
*
Owners committee have power over Management Company but it is all about management
and fee, not about public outreach.
*
The government has power over developer and the resident committee
*
Developer hired planning team and evaluation team but the incentives are not passed along.
To conclude, in Danwei housing case, public participation started from government's weak will of
outreach and resident's concern about surrounding environment and influence on market price.
However, there are four weakness parts:
47
Planning Institute
On
Deveboper
LoEr
Owners Committee
Government/PlaniBrea
0 0 00D0_
000
Resident Committee
0
Entity associated with community
* owner
-operator
C)uu
teats
Entity associated with government
Key coordination entity
Evaluation
E
E-+
--... m.
Organization
> information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 15 Integrated participatory map at Danwei Housing
*
Government has power over resident committee but it is not the government that requests
resident committee to do the outreach. Therefore, the resident committee is not well
incentivized to collect information.
*
Government let the developer do planning, evaluation and development, without realizing
that the developer does not have any incentives of collection potential objections from the
public. Though there are power over them, but the incentives are not passed through.
*
Management Company does not have any market incentives to do public outreach but they
are asked to. More importantly, resident committee do not have any power over them.
*
Owners committee in Danwei house case is not strong enough since most of them do not
physically live in Danwei housing anymore.
4.2.2. Gated Community
Comparing to Danwei house, more residents in gated communities are owner themselves. The
average education level is higher according to the record from resident committee. Therefore, the
residents are more powerful. Not only did they bargain with property Management Company, they
also bargain with the government or even start a protesting.
48
In gated community scenario, it is the same that public and private part are not connected. The
government and the planning institution tried to reach out to the community by evaluation
organization via property management and resident committee, to collect feedback on planning
projects. However, resident committee in gated communities has in general smaller influence and
power: they will ask the property management company to make notification to all residents.
"We usually hand some work over to the property management company because we can't
directly control that many neighborhoods."(G-RC1)
Unfortunately, property management company has no incentive to do anything more than their
responsibility. In fact, in the road widening project that will be addressed later in this paper,
property Management Company in Jindi Tennis Garden (JTG) didn't put up the notice at all: they
declare that they put up but none of the residents in focus group reported they saw any.
"We did put up the notices on the board." (G-PM1)
"We just put up the paper.We are told by the resident committee. Otherthan that,none of our
business." (G-PM2)
"I didn'tsee any notice about this...or I missed it." (G-03)
In the road widening case, in three communities that the evaluation organization tried to reach out,
two property management company didn't response and one reported no objection.
"We reachedout three times to the surroundingcommunities to collect publicfeedback but
received no valuable information.Two of the property company didn't reply and one replied
with no objections." (G-G1)
49
"We hope to collect somefeedbackfrom our citizens but we got none. I have no idea why they
are protesting now. But anyway, this projecthas to keep going. Maybe we canfigure out
something goodfor both." (G-G2)
This brings up the severe questions that information transfer ends at resident committee and
property Management Company where public sector meets private sector. The bridge is broken
so is the information feedback loop. In the road widening case, lack of sufficient communication
ahead of time caused severe rejection and protests from residents in the surrounding communities,
with major concerns of road safety and noise.
It is worth to notice that virtual method is used among residents in the private sector, which is
triggered by the protest against the road widening project.
"We have a QQ group to discuss this road widening project." (G-R5)
"Itis definitely necessaryfor us to exchange information. There are so many things that I was
not aware of before." (G-R7)
"The protesting is not going very well but at least we are not getting togetherto requirefor
better servicesfrom the property management company." (G-R6)
Informational structure:
Planning Institute
0*@
0000
Owners Committee
OResident
<-
____-mmlitee
Committee
<-->
Developer
Management company
-
Evaluation Organizatn
> infonnation flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
50
Government/Planng Bureau
Figure 16 Information flow at Gated Community
*
Residents and tenants report repair/maintenance request to the Management Company
"
Resident committee in gated community is not as strong as those with Danwei houses.
*
Owners do not trust the current owners committee and believe that the owners committee
is manipulated by the management company.
*
The government contracts with developer who contracts with an evaluation organization.
*
The evaluation organization reaches out mainly to Management Company asking for
collecting feedback. And the chain broke.
Incentive structure
Planning
0*
0 .0
o
0
*ein
One
omtee9Mngmn
Company
Resident Committee
Institute
Developer
e
Government/Plaing Buea
Evaluation Organization
-- ----- +- incentive to participate with
Figure 17 Incentive Structure at Gated Community
*
From government point of view, they hope they can learn more about residents' opinion.
But they want to keep that in some extend that will not impede the project implementation.
"
Developer's incentive is to get the project down without breaking any regulation. They have
to do community outreach but they are not fully incentivized.
*
The evaluation organization is not fully incentivized to collect public opinions either.
*
From Management Company's point of view, public outreach is not part of their
responsibilities.
51
*
However on owner's side, they are incentives to communicate with owners committee, and
talk with the government. But they are not fully representing the residents.
Power structure
IPlanning institute
Owners Committee
o0
"'"
GovernmentlPlanning Bureau
an"emenC*Developer
LEvaluation Organization
[Rsdn Committee]
power over
Ema
weak power over
Figure 18 Power Structure at Gated Community
"
Owners committee have power over Management Company. But owners currently do not
have power over the owners committee.
*
The government has power over developer and the resident committee
*
Developer hired planning team and evaluation team but the incentives are not passed along.
To conclude, in Gated community case, public participation started from government's will of
outreach and resident's concern about surrounding environment, safety and security. However,
there are three weakness part:
Planning institute
-eDeveloper
o
0 0-
Resident Committee-
52
-Ealuaton organization
vernment/Pl anning Bureau
o
owner
operator
tenants
]
[
Entity associated with community
>
Entity associated with government
<
-~-~~~-
L Key coordination entity
...
information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 19 Integrated participatory map at Gated Community
"
The Government has power over resident committee but it is not the government that
requests resident committee to do the outreach. Therefore, the resident committee is not
well incentivized to collect information, nor did the evaluation organization has any power
over them.
*
Government let the developer do planning, evaluation and development, without realizing
that the developer does not have any incentives of collection potential objections from the
public. Though there are power over the development from the government, the incentives
are not passed through.
*
The evaluation organization does not have power over any entities in the community.
Therefore, the information exchange becomes weak.
*
Management Company does not have any market incentives to do public outreach but they
are asked to. More importantly, resident committee do not have any power over them.
*
Owners do not have control on owner's committee, which cut their last way to lobby with
the developer and the government. But there is a potential to reconstruct the owners
committee since most the residents are owners themselves.
4.2.3. Urban Village
In urban village cases, since the villagers collectively own the land, they have much more bargain
power with the government. However, in the entire conversation loop, short term tenants are opted
53
out. Although long term tenants communicate with landlords on private issues, they do not have
much bargain power on public issues.
"Ijust hope I can stay longer.But it all depends." (U-L T2)
"I don't know anything about demolition, landlord will let me know." (U-ST3)
Different from the mechanism of property management company and/or residential committee
mode in the above two communities, urban villages have village committee which is an autonomous
organization, rather than the representative of government. Therefore, village committee's
incentive align more with the house owners and landlord. In addition, given the fact that they
collectively own the land, the information flow patter is much throughout and powerful in urban
villages' case.
"We are really cautiousabout any information or rumors." (U-01)
"We know each other very well but many of our children are living." (U-03)
Central location and extremely high land value arm villagers with even more leverage to bargain
with the government. In some cases, such as Gangxia village, villagers grouped up and established a
corporation to collaborate with the government on redevelopment and get their share from project
revenues. Developer, government, planning institution and landlords will usually work together.
"We are readyfor any coming decisions.Gangxia Village is a good example for us. Ourland
now is even more valuable than the land then." (U-02)
"I met several planningteams here doing investigation but didn't know where they come
from." (U-03)
54
In some other cases, few people control the conversation path with the government and managed
to get more compensation out from it. It is reported by some villagers that they feel the village
committee cannot represent the crowd's interest.
"My concern is that there are some people in the village taking too much control.If they and
the government have some sorts of conspiracy,it is not good." (U-02)
Information structure
Planning Institute
O
T
Po OD
0P
:eveloper
Development Co-poeat: :E
:
Government/Planning Bureau
Village Committee
<-
> information flow regarding internal affairs
> information flow regarding planning projects
Figure 20 Information flow at Urban Village
*
The information exchange in urban villages are stronger and more straight forward than in
Danwei community and Gated community cases.
*
The government, developer, development corporation has a communication loop
*
However, house owners reported that they do not know how Development Corporation is
collaborating with the developer and the government. They are afraid that there are
conspiracies.
Incentive structure
55
Planning Institute
Development
Developer
Copoeration ---
---
vernment/Planning Bureau
Po,
0%
000
00000
village Comnittee
incentive to participate with
Figure 21 Incentive Structure at Urban Village
"
The government and developers have strong incentive to communicate with village
committee and Development Corporation, as well as each single landlords.
"
The landlords also have incentives to talk to government but they can only do this through
the village committee and development corporation which they do not fully trust.
Power Structure
Planning Institute
Developer
Development Copoeration
S*O
O
Government/Planning Bureau
t
vlgeC
mittee
u...3
power over
weak power over
Figure 22 Power Structure at Urban Village
The Village committee leads the development corporation. The government has power over the
developer and planning institute.
To conclude, in urban village case, public participation started from government's strong will of
negotiate with the village committee and achieving the land, and resident's concerns about land and
property right as well as compensation. There are two weakness part that might impede the
participatory process:
56
Planning Institute
0-0-----e-op
prIon
__
-_
GovemmentlPlanning Bureau
eoe
--
cPVillage Commmtee
00
*owner
EEntity associated with community
:->
[pEntity associated with government
[II Key coordination entity
...
c
Doperator
o tenants
information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
bpower over
weak power
over
Figure 23 Integrated participatory map at Urban Village
*
The incentive and power structures are well aligned between the government and the
developer. Therefore, the information flow is smooth and effective.
*
Although there is no power over each other between the developer and the development
corporation, the developer has strong market incentive to collaborate with the development
corporation and village committee in order to get the project launched.
*
However, there is a gap between the individual villagers and village committee. Since the
village committee is the reprehensive of villagers, there is no incentives for the government
and developer to get individual agreement from the villagers.
*
Moreover, both long term and short term tenant's voice can't be heard.
4.2.4. Suburban Village
Similar to urban villages, villagers collectively own the land. However, the differences are 1) due the
location, the land value is not as high; 2) the house value is relatively higher since they are
programming as weekend inns; 3) Tenants are mostly hotel manager rather than short term urban
migrants.
57
Losing the leverage on land value, they gain the leverage on house value, ecological value and
culture value. In Jiaochangwei case, they formed a "hotel" association to directly lobby with the
government.
"This is one of the ecology reservationplace in Shenzhen. Very rich ecology resources." (S-HA 1)
"This village is also preserved well and has really unique culture." (S-03)
From the government side, they want new development but as soon as they made the decision to
remove the village, huge discussion raised on social media platforms and paper media. These
increase the cost to implement the project. It was the social media and crowd power that makes the
government abort the idea of entire removal and new developments.
"One really influential newspaper reportedthe government's decision of removal and rising
protests made the government really hard to carry on." (S-SZCD1)
"This time, each municipalgovernment is emphasizing on this project. They sent people over to
keep an eye one." (S-Al)
As a result, the government hire Shenzhen design center, the government affiliated nonprofit
institution, to be the redevelopment project coordinator and started the crowdsourcing
redevelopment process, which is a new mode in China.
"We all know that this is somehow breaking the rules to keep these houses but the government
really hope to do something innovative and explore new modes dealing with urban village
redevelopment." (S-SZCD2)
Shenzhen center for design started crowdsourcing between architects and house owners and
match them into one-o-one pair of redevelopment teams to take charge of corresponding houses.
58
Overarching planning team only provides design guidelines and provide infrastructure based on
individual's design.
"Mr.Ma is our coordinator,he organizedall this." (S-01)
"It'sgreat that Igot this opportunity to meet with these greatgroup of architectsand
designers.I have never thought about that." (S-02)
Shenzhen center for design is a critical figure in the entire information flow pattern: it is the core to
connect the government, the villagers and the planners/architects. More importantly, they are
authorized by the government and the information feedback mechanism works well and is all legit.
"We are the representativeof the government, and we match architectswith house owners
and provide some financialsupport.The whole thing turned out to be much betterthan I had
expected. We are running out of money." (S-SZCD1)
"Besidesthis project,we also run affordablehousing competition, road design workshops,
weekly public lectures,biennale,etc." (S-SZCD3)
Architects are also well incentivized.
"We are doing this as volunteers." (S-A2)
"This is a really greatnetworking opportunity. There are peoplefrom OMA,from municipal
architectureinstitution."(S-A4)
Information structure
59
1
Industry Asoitn
Shenzhen
00C0
Center for Design
Planner/Architects
-
Goverment/Planning Bureau
cP0 0
00000
00 c
Village Commnittee
<
-
Investors
> information flow regarding internal affairs
> information flow regarding planning projects
Figure 24 Information flow at Suburban Village
"
In suburban village's particular information flow pattern, Shenzhen Center of Design is the
hub. The government assigns Shenzhen Center for Design as the main project coordinator
and communicate with planners, architects, hotel association, and individual residents.
*
Under the organization of Shenzhen Center for Design, information flow among all entities
are smooth and effective.
*
In this case, the redevelopment project consists of individual renewal projects and
individual investors are involved.
*
Landlords and long term tenants (hotel managers) also have effective information exchange
with hotel association.
Incentive Structure
Industry Association
0C
0000
00 c
---
Shenzhen Center for Design
-
Planner/Achitects
Government/Planning Bureau
VPOg
Vilgiomte
Investors
---
incentive to participate with
60
Figure 25 Incentive Structure at Suburban Village
"
The government wishes this can be a new model for urban renewal and let Shenzhen center
for Design take the responsibility.
*
Financial wise, the government also have incentive. By distributing urban renewal project
to individuals, the government is saving a huge amount of money. It is estimated that by
removing the houses, the government need to spend more than 10 million RMB while by
launching crowdsourcing redevelopment, the government only spent 300 thousands.
*
Shenzhen Center for Design, on behalf of the government, is well incentivized.
*
Planners, architects, investors and house owners/landlord are distributed decision making
groups and are well incentivized to participate by the market.
*
In suburban village's scenario, each entity is ties with another and the incentive structure is
well established.
Power Structure
Industry Associati
Shenzhen Center for Design
Planner/Architects
Government/Planning Bureau
6000
00
Investors
Village committee
power over
weak power over
Figure 26 Power Structure at Suburban Village
"
The power structure is similar to the urban village scenario that village committee has
power on industry association.
*
Individual investors have power over hotel owners
61
The Government has power over Shenzhen Center for Design.
.
To conclude, in suburban village case, public participation started from governments strong will of
exploring pilot modes for urban village renewal, and resident's concerns about preserving the
emerging hotel industry along the seashore. There are several points to mark:
0 ~ y~a~i~i~a
-PlanDer/Architects
Mdusty Asociation
--Shenzhen Center for Design
SAGovernment/Planning
owner
operator
otenants
-_
Bureau
nvestors
Village Committee
O-00
Plann/Acies
Entity associated with community
-
:i
~~~~~~~~~-
Entity associated with government
Key coordination entity
> information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 27 Integrated participatory map at Suburban Village
*
In suburban village's scenario, almost every entity has incentives to involve with other
players. And the power relation strengthened the market incentives.
*
The most significant difference of this scenario from all other scenario is that Shenzhen
Center for Design is involved, on behalf of the government. Instead of letting the developer
to launch public participation in Danwei housing and gated community cases, Shenzhen
center for Design, under the supervisory of the government, have a strong incentive to
conduct participation since the incentive passed along from the government.
*
While Shenzhen center for Design is the official coordinator representing the government
side, the hotel association is the unofficial coordinator representing the village side. These
two are collaborating well: though they do not have power over each other, the hotel
62
association has market incentive while Shenzhen Center for Design has promotion incentive
to communicate.
Crowdsourcing is playing a vital part in this case which will be elaborated in the following
session.
4.3. Crowdsourcing's potential influence in institutional structures
In urban sector, there are five groups in the whole institutional structure: Crowd--crowd's
organization-Coordinator-planning/development---government;
in urban village setting, there
are four: Crowd-crowd's organization-planning/developer-government. Unnecessary sessions
will impede the information flow and extend the incentive and power structure, resulting less
directly and effective communication.
Crowdsourcing, however, will change this power dynamic.
Danwei housing's participatory process is centered on Resident committee. However, as has
discussed above, the resident committee does not have enough motivation. Moreover, owners
committee is not strong enough. Crowdsourcing can strengthen the following parts: 1)
crowdsourcing enable owners to form a stronger owner's committee and conduct better monitor
on management company. i.e. giving owners the power over owners committee; 2) crowdsourcing
enables more frequent and effective information exchange between residents and resident
committee; (resident committee should be assigned by the government to be participatory planning
coordinator.) 3) crowdsourcing enables direct communication between residents and planning
institute which might provide better solutions.
63
Planning Institute
Government/Planning Bureau
Developer
0O ,0
0
0
0 0000
000
0
Comte
<Resident
Evaluation Organization
Before Crowdsourcing
Institute
IPlanning
*
00
A
O
-AGve
Developert
t Company
owners committee
ent/PlImning Bureau
0~00
0000
7
-Com
--
tt--
Evaluation Organization
Short term after crowdsourcing
Planning Institute
*A
@
wners Committee
Deve
-
r
Goverment/Planning Bureau
A tac..a..Evaluation Organization
00 0 0
Expected long term after crowdsourcing
*->
Entity associated with community
o
owner
operator
tenants
'E
Entity associated with government
[ Key coordination entity
-----ow...
information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 28 Crowdsourcing's potential in Danwei Housing
In Gated community, it is currently the "propertymanagement mode", but crowdsourcing can
shift it to "owners' committee mode". In specific, crowdsourcing enhanced the following parts:
1) it enhances the information change in between residents, which arms them with the power to be
autonomous and reelect the owners committee; 2) improve the problem solving capacity of owners
committee; 3) given more awareness and incentives for owners committee to communicate with
64
evaluation organization; 4) direct information exchange between residents and the planning
institute; Crowdsourcing can help reduce one session in this mechanism: the management company
and the resident committee. In gated community scenario, the best way of participation should be
done through owners committee, rather than the management company, nor the resident
committee.
Planning Institute
O
00
r
0
Bureau
tDeveGoveent/Planning
M
Owners Committee
Renttee
Evaluation Organizaton1
R esident Commttee -----
Evaluation Organization
Short term after crowdsourcing
Planning Institute
Expected long term after crowdsourcing
owner
00operator
) tenants
[II
[
]
Entity
associated
witb community
Entity associated with government
Key coordination entity
*->
C->
n.n.i
information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 29 Crowdsourcing's potential at Gated Community
65
Urban village's participatory level is higher than that in Danwei housing or gated community. The
information flow, incentive and power structure are well established, and the incentives and power
influences are aligned. The major missing part is the effective communication and trust between
villages and villages committee: this can be realized by crowdsourcing. It will empower the
individuals in the community. Urban village's participatory mode is "development corporation
mode."
Planning Institute
o
O
Coperation
**
Development
--
Developer
-----
Government/Planning Bureau
60o oo
o0
C>
Village Committee
Before Crowdsourcing
Planning Institute
0O
b
\Develop
operation
Developer
------
Government/Planning Bureau
Village Committee
After crowdsourcing
owner
operator
Ctenants
]Entity associated with community
[1|]Entity associated with government
Key c
iKey
coordiation entity
>
*
->
- -------
.Ma..
information flow regarding internal affairs
information flow regarding planning projects
incentive to participate with
power over
weak power over
Figure 30 Crowdsourcing's potential at Urban Village
Suburban village is a special case. In the participatory process, there are two key players: the
industry association and the government affiliated non-profit organization: this is also called
"association-NPO" mode. Crowdsourcing is also a key element in the mechanism. Crowdsourcing
enables the information exchange between residents, planners, architects and hotel association.
66
Crowdsourcing also provided distributed aggregated solutions towards urban renewal project If
not for crowdsourcing, Shenzhen center for design will not be able to launch this project.
-
-
stry Aociation
-
Serzhen Center fir Design
Planner/Architects
0000O
00
Govemment/Planning
h
Investors
Village committee
Entity associated with community
owner
operator
otenants
Bureau
-
Entity associated with government
>
--------
information flow regarding internal affairs
flow regarding planning projects
information
mincentive to participate with
power over
LJKey coordination entity
=mawatweak power over
Figure 31 Crowdsourcing's potential at Suburban Village
To conclude, crowdsourcing's potential lie in the following aspects:
1) Information flow: it is a new technology and provides new platforms to collect, distribute
information and enable peer discussion, and increase information transparency and
accessibility. This process can enhance the information flow between crowd and their
representatives. This can also help government to conduct public participation more
directly, reduce unnecessary middle parts. Moreover, it lets planners know better about the
local culture and resident's demands.
2) Incentive structure: by lower the difficulty level of participation, people are more motivated
to engage: the willingness to participate increase. Moreover, crowdsourcing also enables
individual construction right and house owners, investors have the market incentive. On the
other hand, architects are motivated by the opportunity to participate in the urban renewal
process and realize a design proposal.
67
3)
Power structure: by making information more accessible, crowdsourcing is ultimately
changing the power structure. The most direct influence is that residents have more power
over owner's committee/ village committee, etc. The other influence is that crowdsourcing
make information more transparent and to some extend force the government to conduct
public participation. The third change in power structure is about community
empowerment: people learnt how to self-organize and are more aware of civic right.
Table 5 Comparison of four communities and crowdsourcing's potential
case
type
YIJING
JINDI
LINGBEI
JIAOCHANGWEI
Danwei
Housing
Gated
Community
Urban Village
Suburban Village
project
NA
Road Widening
NA
Revitalization
topic mism itch
Public/private
Public/private
Public/privat
Public/private
key coordin ator
Resident
committee
Property
management
company
Development
corporation
Hotel association/
government
affiliated NPO
dis-connect point
Resident
committee-
management
company-
Owners-villag e
committee
non
management
owners
companyowners
committee,
committee
comte
Owners-owners
committee
incentive/p ower
Not aligned
Not aligned
Aligned
Aligned
feedback lo op
yes
yes
no
yes
feedback loop
within public
sectors
yes
yes
yes
yes
feedback loop in
between two
sectors
no
no
yes
yes
virtual
participation
Online
notification
QQ-
Online
notification
Wechat-group
within private
sectors
group/Wechat
68
Official website
Forum
physical
participation
Notice,
Notice,
Notice
Inn-association
Feedback
Feedback
Villagers
collection form
(-)
collection form
meeting
On-site
crowdsourcing
Protesting
Focus group
discussion
NA
Protest,
Complaints,
Community
affairs
69
NA
design proposals
problem shooting
Chapter Five
From Crowdsourcing Spectrum to
Chinese Civic Participatory Ladder:
Crowdsourcing's Influence
Crowdsourcing, as defined, is a method to encourage peer to peer information sharing and problem
solving, triggered by virtual platforms. In urban planning regime in China, crowdsourcing takes
place in a variety of forms. Depending on who the crowd is responding to, there are basically three
types: 1) crowd to none, 2) crowd to one and 3) crowd to crowd.
However, these three types per se are not necessarily the indicators of the level of civic
participation. Each type of crowdsourcing process will gradually evolve into different level of civic
participation at community level.
This chapter will explain this in depth with case studies, illustrate the mechanism of evolvement
from crowdsourcing to civic participation and constructs the ladder of civic participation in China
regime. Ladder of Chinese civic participation will also be discussed.
70
5.1. Crowdsourcing spectrum
5.1.1 Crowd to none (Casel)
Crowd to none scenario is the situation where crowdsourcing is happening within the crowd,
triggered by certain events, but no authorized organization is in charge of the crowdsourcing
procedure. There are mainly two types of crowd to none crowdsourcing.
The first type is more common: open ended crowdsourcing. It is self-initiated non-exclusive
crowdsourcing on social media platforms, such as Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter). Cases
include protesting against urban village demolition, road widening, etc. By tracing down these
open-ended crowdsourcing process, all ended up as individual complaints. Crowdsourcing doesn't
lead to any improvement on civic participation. This crowdsourcing is more informational, or for
general discussion or protests. Open ended crowdsourcing helps rise people's awareness on civic
participation and may also bring up enough attention for the government to reconsider the
decision they made.
The second type is less common: inclusive crowdsourcing. In this scenario, crowdsourcing is
limited to people with in one community. They tend to not use Weibo but group chatting tools
including
QQ and Wechat
and by tracing down their discussion, it is found that inclusive
crowdsourcing will finally lead to reelection and community self-organization.
In order to protest against a road widening proposal and stop the implementation, several
residents from Jindi Tennis center (gated community) started a campaign on line and also
established a
QQ group in
December 2013. All verified residents in Jindi Tennis center are allowed
to join the group chat.
71
Road widening proposalproposeto widen the east side ofAntuoshan 9th Rd: taking 1 meter street tree
spaces and 3.2 meter ofside walk into one more lanefor cars.And transferthe 3.5 meter wide bush
belt into future side walk
In the first stage, they focus more on both protesting online and protesting on site, and discuss
about the next action. In December, they reached out to the transportation department appealing
their request to stop this project in the sake of safety since this is a road in front of a primary school
and a middle school. However, the transportation department's reply was that they already had an
environmental evaluation organization done three round of community outreach while getting no
objections, and that the project was already approved from the environmental sensitivity analysis
and was ready to implement. Lacking of pre-implementation information exchange as discussed in
the above chapters, the local residents started on site protesting as well as on line protesting.
Residents crowd-sourced for ideas to protest and to lobby with the government.
72
*Translation of the signs: Against road widening! /for student's safety sake, strongly against evil
will developers' road widening project!!
Figure 32 photos showing the protest (bottom left photo by author, other two from Google)
However, lack of legitimacy made this self-initiated effort meaningless, but the inclusive
crowdsourcing process was still going on. In January and February, residents in this community
turned their topics on community safety and security, mutual help, outing, housekeeping, etc.
Crowdsourcing evolved into smart community.
"I want to take my children to Kenya, who want tojoin?"(Focusgroup)
"My housemaid went home, who else can recommend one for me?" (Focusgroup)
"The elevatorstopped working again this morning. Why the property managementcompany
didn'tfix it!" (Focusgroup)
However, later in February and March, issues regarding public goods, such as peer monitor on use
of public space, noise control and parking issues, were brought up. From late March to April, more
and more topics turned from complaint from problem solving: this is when residents started to
question parking lot allocation, management fee, etc. and tried to reach out to property
Management Company.
73
Focus topic after protest for road widening project
100%
- information
90%
sharing
E mutual help of
80%
grouping
70%
a house
rental and
60%
sale
50%
monitoring
40%
U protest
30%
a self organization
20%
10%
0%
2b
2a
3b
3a
4a
Figure 33 Focus topic evolution in Gated Community Road Widening Case
More important, four month after the original road widening protest, the crowdsourcing group
evolved into an informal self-management group. Residents proposed to reelect the owner's
committee and began to reach out to local resident committee for approval of the reelection. They
also formed monitor groups to supervise property Management Company's work and help improve
information transparency.
It is worth to note that most of the active members in the group chat are middle-ages who usually
express their ideas representing their family.
Although the crowd to none crowdsourcing seems to be lack of legitimacy and would hardly get any
substantial positive results, it did help form the platform for smart community and self-
management.
5.1.2
Crowd to one
74
Typical many to one cases in China are planning workshops. Examples include the case of SinoNetherlands New New Town workshop', in Jan. 2013, the case of street renewal which started from
Apr.2014 2, etc. However, all these workshop and meetings are facing to experts. Crowdsourcing as a
tool is limited and cannot utilize the advantage of non-expert wisdom or local knowledge.
There is one attempt using Ushahidi to launch online participation, but only 33 replied were
received.
-
*1
On site community meeting is rare. In most of
the cases, community outreach is done by
'414
*
na
community survey or self-report. This is
however, not considered as a kind of
crowdsourcing since it does not generate
conversation in between the crowds.
Figure 34 Ushahidi Platform at Shenzhen
More crowd to one cases can be found in western context. It is also important to understand how
the government can shift the crowd to none scenario to crowd to one scenario. This will be
discussed in the next chapter.
5.1.3
Crowd to crowd (Case2)
Crowd to crowd is in nature the most common scenario: in private sectors, both end of
crowdsourcing are crowd. For example, crowd logo design, crowd interior design are all crowd to
crowd on both ends.
1 http://www.szdesigncenter.org/?p=32665
2 http://www.szdesigncenter.org/?p=32361
75
However, in public sector, especially for participatory planning, it is almost impossible that both
ends are "crowd". Public goods' property right are usually not well defined, therefore the
government is the agent to provide the service.
As mentioned above, in urban villages, lands are collectively owned and houses are individually
owned. Individuals also have the construction right over their house. The property ownership and
construction right structure assures the potential of Crowd to crowd crowdsourcing.
"It is all about propertyright.Or there is no true public participation.In the urban area,public
participationmeans what is the best strategy under the government decision. But in the rural
area,publicparticipationmeans directly involved in the decision process." (General-Pi)
In the Jiaochangwei redevelopment case (suburban village), crowd to crowd crowdsourcing was
applied. Shenzhen center for design was assigned by the government in January 2014 as the official
coordinator to recruit architects from the crowd. Via online platform, Shenzhen center for design
successfully recruited 24 architects' teams via open invitation and matched them with each house
owners after several rounds of on-site matching events. After each architect team and each house
owner was matched, they were asked to submit their initial building renew plan in order to receive
the "matching fee" which may cover the construction cost. Architects work as volunteers with their
client, the house owner, under supervises from an overarching planning team who provide
guidelines and infrastructure plan. (Details of the matching, see appendixi)
In this crowd to crowd scenario, the crowd are actually distributed decision makers who
contribute to the entire redevelopment planning project. This is the case where in urban planning,
both ends are crowd.
76
In crowd to crowd case, people focuses on organization issue, matching issues, discuss about design
and construction, etc. The whole conversation is much more focused than in the crowd to none
scenario.
Focus topics during Jiaochangwei Redevelopment
100%
90%
80%
70%
*
60%
a problem
50%
n
publicize
other
40%
organization
30%
matching
20%
U design
H
10%
lb
2a
2b
3a
3b
constructuion
4a
4b
Month
Figure 35 Focus topic evolution in Suburban Village Redevelopment Case
At the beginning phase, matching and design proposals were the most discussed topic. After
architects and house owners were matched and created the initial design proposal, the topic
changed more to organization and on-site construction. From March on, some problems emerged
and were brought up.
The first problem was lack of investment and collaborator. As a result, two projects were
terminated.
"I was sofrustratedthat one of our investor broke the contract and we can'tkeep on going."
(Focusgroup2)
77
"Ihave two buildingsto redesign but now it goes down to one" (focus group2)
The other problem was about public property and private property. Many construction invaded
into public spaces and triggered conflicts.
"There is some property issue problem with Aloha's land. There grapegrid is occupying the
public space so that's why it was removed by the urban managementenforcement team"
(focusgroup2)
Moreover, there were problems regarding whether individual design meet the requirement from
zoning and design guideline. There are conflict between construction team and local urban
management officers. The conflict caught a flight the house owner was arrested. This is a result of
lacking communication between the municipal planning department and district government.
"Peoplefrom Dalv Xiaoshe was arrestedyesterday because they obstructed urban
managementenforcement team'sforced demolition." (Focusgroup2)
"I hope there could be better communication between Design center and localgovernment."
(Focus group2)
"Didn'twe hand in the constructionpermissions?"(Focusgroup2)
"This is going to be on today's TV news." (Focusgroup2)
To conclude, crowd to crowd crowdsourcing can lead to distributed decision making. The overall
information flow, incentive structure and power structure are aligned but there are other problems.
First of all, in the crowd to crowd scenario, developers are not guaranteed. It is likely that investors
are out of the budget and can't continue the renewal project;
78
Secondly, there might be some misunderstanding between municipal urban planning bureau and
district level government. When the construction started, local government sent urban
management team to stop, which brought up conflicts, resulting in people arrested.
Thirdly, overall, urban planning is about public spaces and properties. Since crowd to crowd is
dealing with private properties, two problems left for public properties: 1) who provide the
overarching plan? 2) How to define public space and private spaces? In this case, Shenzhen center
for Design collaborated with planning institution provides the overarching plan but public/private
space distinguish is still blur. Conflicts were brought up by unclearly identified space property
rights.
5.2. Ladder of Chinese civic participation
As has mentioned above, there are several flaws in Arnstein's ladder. It confused strategy with
outcome. It only assumes a single form of participation: residents becoming involved with
programs that originate outside their neighborhood through top-down planning. It does not
acknowledge the best form of resident participation based upon the planning context. More
importantly, it does not consider the changing context after 1960s: public-private partnership, etc.
small scale community Development Corporation. There are updated ladders brought up by Janelle
Plummer and John G Taylor in 2004 in Chinese context, but it is in rural and village settings. Bratt
and Reardon's (2013) ladder, however, is still in a traditional context with more consideration of
various context. It is an extension of Arnstein's ladder but not a new one that speaks to new
technology and social order.
In order to avoid the flaws, in this discussion, we define three aspects of the ladder: awareness,
strategy and outcome, considering both top-down and bottom-up perspective, and the emerging
79
technology in information era. The argument here is that by moving up in the civic awareness
ladder and enabled by more strategies can the society moves up on the outcome ladder. The
following part is trying to construct the empirical ladders in Chinese participatory planning context
and identify how crowdsourcing can help people move up the ladder.
5.2.1. Ladder of civic awareness
Ladder of civic awareness reviews participation from citizen's point of view, which started from
civic awareness and ends up at bottom-up actions that drawn from civic awareness. This ladder
reflected a grassroots, bottom up participation framework regardless of the government's attitude.
Based on the cases examined above, there are seven racks of civic awareness on the ladder.
Ignore: Ignore refers to the situation where nobody cares about any participation issues.
Therefore, nobody is willing to participate.
Complain: people started to realize that they are not satisfied with the current condition but do not
know how, where and to who to express their opinions. They start to complain, to the people
around, or on line.
Crowd complain: when a lot of individuals complain on one thing simultaneously, there is
potential that the crowd may come together and form a group to complain, to protest or even lobby
with the government.
Crowd problem solving: one step further up crowd complain, it is crowd-problem solving, which
also jumps from awareness to action. Instead of complaining, problem solving creates a better
environment of conversation. Suggestion is constructive and bring all groups together, rather than
apart.
80
Smart community: smart community is one more step
FORMAL COMMUNITY
ORGANIZATION
ahead of problem solving. People in the conversation
loop may start to help each other on other issues such as
SELF MANAGEMENT
borrow and lend, car sharing, etc.
SMART COMMUNITY
Self-management/corporation/
committee/association: this is an informal way of tying
-0
C.)
CROWD PROBLEM SOLVING
people with same interest together. For example,
CROWD COMPLAIN
residents are monitoring on the physical environment of
the community and the property management company's
COMPLAIN
performance.
(a
s-s
Formal community organization: Formal community
IGNORE
organization is on the top of the civic awareness ladder. It
is a self-elected, self-management organization that
response for every aspects of the community. Reelection of
Figure 36 Ladder of Awareness
the owners committee in the road widening case is an example.
5.2.2. Ladder of strategy
Different from the ladder of civic awareness, ladder of strategies are tools and methods the crowd
and the government can use to conduct public participation. This ladder reflects how different
means can facilitate and enable participation.
Notification: This is the lowest ranking in strategy ladder. Notification is a unidirectional
communication tool.
81
Expression (Survey): Survey allows people to express their
opinions in a limited way without feedback. Moreover, it does
not provide the environment where people can communication
'0
with each other.
a)
PARTNERSHIP
Protests: without enough effective feedback from people's
0
WORKSHOP
appeal, radical protests are the method to raise government's
V)
attention.
DISCUSSION
Discussion: discussion is less formal way of conversation
cd
PROTESTS
between the government and the crowd. Conversation can be a
face to face one or on an online platform.
EXPRESSION
Workshop: workshop is a more formal way of participation
which usually happens in the planning stage. The crowd,
NOTIFICATION
government and planners are all invited to work toward to a
consensus. This can be either online or on site.
Partnership: partnership based on the cases of public-private
Figure 37 Ladder of Strategies
partnership. This presumption is that some of the land that will be developed are collectively
owned and some private properties will also be affected. Partnership gives the crowd more
leverage over the government.
5.2.3. Ladder of outcome
Ladder of outcome on one hand reflects the situation on ladder of civic awareness and the ladder of
strategy that enables, on the other hand reflects government's top-down attitude toward
participation, and property right structure.
82
Manipulation: people have to accept all decisions made by the government and do not have a
channel to express their opinions.
Information collection: information is collected from the individual and the government made
the final decision.
Consultation: the crowd and the government work to gather
W
towards some consensus. The crowd act as consultants to help
o.
CITIZEN CONTROL
shape the decision. But the government still makes the final
CO-DECISION MAKING
decision.
Co-decision making: co-decision making is one step further
up the ladder that the crowd are authorized to co-decide with
W
the government. Co-decision making is usually based on the
0
CONSULTATION
situation where there is a conflicts on private and public
properties benefits, or the government does not own the land.
INFORMATION
COLLECTION
Figure 38 Ladder of Outcomes
Therefore, this is an uncertain positive outcome.
MANIPULATION
Citizen control: citizen control is the highest level of outcome
on the participatory ladder. In this scenario, decisions are
dominated by the crowd. In current China, the crowd still yield
to the government's decision.
5.2.4. Relationship of the three
Three ladders are independent but also related to each other, which is shown in the following
diagram. It is worth to notice that in the cases where the crowd do not have ownership over the
83
land, the highest they can come up with from awareness perspective is formal community
organization, while strategy wise, is workshop and then consultation as an outcome. In the cases
with urban villages where people collectively own the land, they can reach to partnership with the
government and make co-decisions.
There isn't casual relationship in between the ladders but a generic relationship does exist, which is
shown in the following graph. Different level of bottom-up and top-down willness may
coresponding to different strategy level.
ladder of outcome
ladder of strategy
ladder of awareness
FORMAL COMMUNITY
ORGANIZATION
CITIZEN CONTROL
SELF MANAGEMEN;
PARTNERSHIP
SMART COMMUNITY-------------
WORKSHOP
CROWD PROBLEM SOLV4N-------
DISCUSSION
_CO-DECISION
MAKING
0
(U
I
CROWD COMPLAIN---------------
COMPLAIN
IGNORE
bottom up
--------------- 2
-------------- 3-
-------------- N
CONSULTATION
PROTESTS
EXPRESSION
--------------
-
NOTIFICATION -------------
MANIPULATION
top down
methods
Generic relationship (when land is collectively
owned)
--------- Generic relationship
Figure 39 citizen participatory ladders in Chinese regime
84
INFORMATION
COLLECTION
5.3. Crowdsourcing's influence over the ladder
Crowdsourcing as discussed above, enhanced information flow, incentive structure and power
structure towards a better participatory environment.
The most effective part for crowdsourcing is its influence on people's awareness of participation. In
Chinese regime where the participatory culture is weak, only few people are aware of the fact that
they should express their opinion. Crowdsourcing magnifies the influences on others and raise the
awareness of participation. In the Gated community case, crowdsourcing helps the community
reach to autonomy.
Crowdsourcing also provide new method and platforms to enable participation happen. Beyond
notification and conductin surveys, crowdsourcing enables organized protests, discussion and
workhop, at a broader scale. Protests may raise enough social attention to let the government
reconsider the project. Discussion and workshop with the crowd may bring nonexpert wisdom and
local knowledge and reach to the outcome of "consultation". Moreover, if the crowd have the
property right ove the land, crowdsourcing can ultimately enable partnership between private and
public sector, for instance, the suburban village' case.
Although crowdsourcing can not change directly the outcome of participation, its influence on civic
awareness and participatory strategy does bring the participatory outcome up the ladder.
In the crowd to none case with inclusive crowdsourcing procedure at post-implementation phase,
crowdsourcing's influence on civic participation can be reflected by the following image. People in
the community shifts from complaint, to crowd complaint, to problem solve and finally evolve into a
smart community, self management, and then reelect the onwers committee, reaching to the top of
the awareness ladder. However, on the strategy part, since this is a post-implementation case,
85
crowdsourcing enable them reaching to "protest" which triggers media's attention. Although the
government didn't change the outcome, they do collect information and give responses to the local
residents.
ladder of strategy
ladder of awareness
ladder of outcome
FORMAL COMMUNITY
CITIZEN CONTROL
ORGANIZATION
NI
SELF MANAGEMENT
PARTNERSHIP
SMART COMMUNITY
WORKSHOP
CROWD PROBLEM SOLVING
DISCUSSION
CO-DECISION MAKING
CONSULTATION
PROTESTS
CROWD COMPLAIN
INFORMATION
COMPLAIN
C)
0
IGNORE
0
0
0
bottom up
EXPRESSION
NOTIFICATION
methods
COLLECTION
MANIPULATION
top down
Specific relationship without crowdsourcing
Specific relationship with crowdsourcing
Figure 40 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-none-inclusive scenario
In the crowd to none case-with open ended platform at pre implementation stage, crowdsourcing
brought up people from simply ignore to crowd-complain. Since it is on the open ended platform
like Weibo, people are hard to coordinate together. The only way is that they arise enough attention
and pressure on the government, forcing them consult with them and change their decision. In
Jiaochangwei case, local residents successfully changed government's decision of demolition into on
site redevelopment.
86
ladder of awareness
ladder of strategy
FORMAL COMNv JNITY
ORGANIZATIOI
ladder of outcome
CITIZEN CONTROL
SELF MANAGEMENT
PARTNERSHIP
CO-DECISION MAKING
21
SMART COMMUNITY
WORKSHOP
I-, DISCUSSION
CROWD PROBLEM SOLVING
PROTESTS
CROWD COMPLAIN
COMPLAIN
IGNORE
bottom up
CONSULTATION
0
EXPRESSION
INFORMATION
COLLECTION
NOTIFICATION
MANIPULATION
methods
top down
Specific relationship without crowdsourcing
Specific relationship with crowdsourcing
Figure 41 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-none-openending scenario
In crowd to one case at pre implementation stage, crowdsourcing brought up civic awareness and
also enables better participatory strategies: it goes up from notification to workshop both on site
and on line, reaching to the outcome of consulatation.
87
ladder of awareness
FORMAL COMN JNITY
ORGANIZATIO?"
ladder of outcome
ladder of strategy
I
II
fi
CITIZEN CONTROL
SELF MANAGEMENT
PARTNERSHIP
SMART COMMUNITY
WORKSHOP
CROWD PROBLEM SOLVING
DISCUSSION
CROWD COMPLAIN
PROTESTS
CO-DECISION MAKING
0
COMPLAIN
I
IGNORE
0
bottom up
CONSULTATION
I
EXPRESSION
INFORMATION
COLLECTION
MANIPULATION
NOTIFICATION
I
methods
top down
Specific relationship without crowdsourcing
Specific relationship with crowdsourcing
Figure 42 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-one scenario
In crowd to crowd case at pre implementation stage, where the "crowd" have the property right
over the land, crowdsourcing can be most effective. It will be even more effective when there is one
entity with direct incentives coordinate all other groups. In Jiaochangwei case, Shenzhen Center for
Design and hotel association are the two entities that coordinate.
In the previous urban village particiaption cases, villager complained, expressed their opinion and
the government consulted with village committee. However, there are dis-conection between
villagers and village committee. Crowdsourcing helped bridge this gap and forster a better village
committee and hotel association, which leads to partnership with the government and reachs the
outcome of co-decision making, or individualized decision making.
88
ladder of awareness
ladder of strategy
ladder of outcome
FORMAL COM-N JNITY
ORGANIZATIO
SELF MANAGEMENT
I
PARTNERSHIP
CO-DECISION MAKING
ca
.2
-6,
SMART COMMUNITY
WORKSHOP
CROWD PROBLEM SOLVING
DISCUSSION
CROWD COMPLAIN
CONSULTATION
PROTESTS
COMPLAIN
EXPRESSION
INFORMATION
COLLECTION
IGNORE
NOTIFICATION
MANIPULATION
bottom up
methods
top down
Specific relationship without crowdsourcing
Specific relationship with crowdsourcing
Figure 43 Crowdsourcing's influence in Crowd-to-crowd scenario
To conclude, crowdsourcing brings the potential to public participation but more importantly
makes it a necessity. The crowd to none case illustrates that low cost information transaction it
easier for people to get access to and they are more willing to learn about the planning project,
while at the meantime, share and express their opinion. This reflects on the ladder of awareness
that regardless of the govrnment will, civic awareness is brought up by information technology, and
crowdsourcing allows them to react together, even form formal community organization.
On the strategy ladder, crowdsourcing enables discussion, workshop in a broader scale and
partnership in a more transpartent way.
89
Crowdsourcing also has indirect impact on the outcome ladder. Crowd's bottom up reactions put
pressure on the government side which forces the government to change their top-down strategies,
i.e. ultimately change the ladder of outcome.
5.4. Western practice
Before entering policy analysis part, it is also important to address some typical crowdsourcing
application in western context. While in Chinese cases, crowdsourcing mostly encourages public
participation, in western scenario where there already exists a participatory culture and regulation,
crowdsourcing is a way to facilitate participation. There are traditional physical crowdsourcing
such as question campaign, street corner pop-up, etc., there are also emerging virtual
crowdsourcing which utilize the online platform. Virtual crowdsourcing in community participation
is also new in western context.
This section will use CoUrbanize as a case to illustrate the application and potential advantages and
flaws of virtual participation in western context.
Co-Urbanize is a startup run by Karen, a MIT DUSP (department of urban studies and planning)
alumni. The idea rooted in her experience in community meetings: there are significantly more
seniors; people who presented in the meeting are more intent to reject the project; people are
sometimes emotional and there is a lack of trust between local residents and developers. At the
Resident side, lack of information transparency, the reducing participatory culture and increasing
emotional participation are the problems. On developer's side, however, they hope to smooth the
participatory process since it is costly to delay a project.
Karen therefore came up with the "bridging" idea of building up a civic platform to reach out to
more people, not just seniors, and to help residents get more information about planning project,
90
report their opinions and also let the developer to release the information and build the trust from
the very beginning. This is a crowdsourcing idea that allows residents' discussion about this project
and also involves the developer and even local government.
Find local projects and join the conversatlon Follow a project to stay up to date
on the latest news.
4
Project
Cabige Redovolopm
40 Thorndike Street
Bos
Am"s Street Rosidentidl_
4
V~
JPMRoxbury,1Dorchoster..
Figure 44 coUrbanize's main page with projects mapped
More importantly, this business model is a for-profit one. It charges the developer who uses this
platform. This platform, for developers, is an opportunity to 1) better "sell" their project, 2) build
trust from the very beginning in design stage, and 3) obtain more diverse voices other than only
rejections (i.e. democrat the communities' core people's power), so that the developer can show the
city government that they get support from more residents who is not showing up in the meeting.
The ultimate goal is to help build up the trust between developer and local residents from very
beginning and make the whole communication process into a positive loop. As for citizens, this
website in the future may collect all planning project information together so that they don't need
to go to other websites.
There are some principles regarding using the platform: 1) CoUrbanize encourages "fact-based"
conversation, rather than "emotional-based". 2) Everyone should use their real name just as they do
91
during community meeting. 3) People can "follow" a project if they are interested and they can
review, support, comment each other's comments. 4) Developer will come to the platform on a
regular base to answer resident's questions.
Find local projects and joIn the cc
Projects
JP/Roxbury/Dorchester Hubway
Boston, MA
Cambridge Redevelopm...
9 61 comments
Information
40 Thorndike Street
9
Updates
Timeline
Cc
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Ames Street Residential
9
28 comments
Charlestown Hubway
V
Bojamin Patience, Southwest Corridor Bikeway!
33 comments
12 supporters. including Luis Cardona. Art
9
126 comments
South Boston Hubway
9
Ofsevit. Christopher Pardo. Bob Fagan. Mike Smith and 7 more.
Hubway should expand along the entire length of the Southwest Corridor With
stations at Jackson Square, Stony Brook. Green Street, and Forest Hills. Other
possible Jamaica Plain locations could include Hyde Square and the Brewery
Complex.
JP/Roxbury/Dorchester ...
* JPRD 1
87 comments
1
0
Responses Posted on May 17, 2013, 0144 PM
0
Figure 45 coUrbanize's project discussion forum
It is obvious that this platform helps reveal information more real time, involve more residents and
generated more discussions. It invites people outside the community meeting and release restricts
on meeting time and spaces.
Table 6 Resolving restriction on time and space
TIME
SPACE
set
Not set
set
e.g. community meeting
e.g. Community board
Not set
e.g. Skype meeting
e.g. CoUrbanize
92
However, this application of crowdsourcing within such a business model may generate some
problems. First of all, it is the dilemma of CoUrbanize's claim of value neutral and their business
model that relies on the developer. It may be hard for them to be "value neutral": if they are value
neutral enough, the developer may find they are not valuable enough to pay for the service. (It is
found that the developers actually want more people to "follow" (i.e. participate in this project), but
less to comment). Secondly, the online platform invites more people outside the community
meeting and this time probably the senior's voices are not heard. There will be bias either way and
further study should be done to see whether on-line and on-site methods combine together can
minimize the bias. 3) There aren't a lot of people using this platform. This is a problem of lacking
participatory culture. There should be more feedback or reward mechanism to incentivize people's
participation. 4) It is concluded in Chinese case that most of the people only care about internal
issues and projects that are close enough to intervene their life. In participatory crowdsourcing
process, it will be a one-time game rather than multiple times game, which mean the developer may
not have full incentive to behave well and eliminate information asymmetric.
93
Chapter Six
Conclusion and Policy Implications
6.1. Major findings and Conclusion
Major findings of this research include six aspects: 1) community structures and focus topics, 2)
information/incentive/power structure, 3) crowdsourcing's influence on the structures, 4)
crowdsourcing's spectrum, 5) Ladder of Chinese participation and 6) crowdsourcing's influence on
the ladders.
0
Community structures and focus topics
There are five key entities that shape the residential real estate development of urban
communities in China: 1)Residents, including owners and tenants; 2) the owners committee or
village committee, development corporation, hotel association; 3) the combination resident
committee and property management company, (or organizations such as the Shenzhen Center for
Design who coordinate in between); 4) the constellation of planning institute, evaluation
organization, developer, and investors; and 5) the ultimate decision maker, the government. In
94
rural communities, there are four key types of players: 1)Residents, 2) the village committee which
is functionally both owners committee and resident committee, 3) the constellation of planning
institute, evaluation organization, developer, and investors, and 4) the government.
Among all stakeholders, there are mis-matches of focus topics between the public end and the
private end, which make them lack a common base to communicate. In most of the redevelopment
cases, local residents care about more personal issues and internal issues which directly affect
themselves while the government cares about providing a public good which might not have
enough influence on the individuals, or which might jeopardize an individual's benefits.
0
Information flow, Incentive structure and power structure
The research concludes that information flow, incentive structure, and power structure are the
three elements that explain a participatory process, and these operate differently in different
communities. However, there are weak parts in each scenario that can result in the failure or public
participation.
In the cases of the Danwei and the gated community, public participation started from governments
weak will of outreach and residents' concern about the surrounding environment and its influence
on market price. Government let the developer do planning, evaluation and development, without
realizing that the developer did not have any incentives to collect potential objections from the
public. Though the government has power over developers, the incentives are not passed through.
The government also has power over the resident committee but it is not the government that
directly requests resident committee to do the outreach: the resident committee is not well
incentivized. In addition, the management company does not have any market incentives to do
public outreach, although they are sometimes asked to do so by the resident committee or
evaluation institute, who do not have power over it. The major differences between the gated
95
community and the Danwei housing is that the owners committee is stronger than the resident
committee in the gated community, while it is the opposite in Danwei housing. I also conclude that,
in the gated community, the owner's committee is manipulated, so that the most effective way to
lobby with the developer and the government is eliminated.
In the Urban village and Suburban village cases, public participation started from government's
strong will to negotiate with the village committee and obtain the land, and resident's concerns
about land and property right as well as compensation. In general, the incentive and power
structures are well aligned between the government and the developer and the information flow is
smooth and effective. Although there is no power over each other between the developer and the
development corporation, the developer has a strong market incentive to collaborate with the
development corporation and village committee in order to get the project launched. However,
there is a gap between the individual villagers and village committee. Some villagers claim that the
village committee does not represent their voices. In the suburban village case, the most significant
difference is that Shenzhen Center for Design became involved, on behalf of the government and it
has a strong incentive to conduct participation since that incentive had been passed along from the
government. While the Shenzhen Center for Design is the official coordinator represented the
government side, the hotel association is the unofficial coordinator representing the village side.
These two are collaborating well: though they do not have power over each other, the hotel
association has market incentive while Shenzhen Center for Design has promotion incentive to
communicate.
9
Crowdsourcing's influence on the institutional structure
I conclude that crowdsourcing will change the information flow/incentive/power structure. First, it
is a new technology that provides new platforms to collect and distribute information and enable
96
peer discussion, and will increase information transparency and accessibility. This process can
enhance the information flow between the crowd and their representatives. This can also help
government to conduct public participation more directly, and reduce unnecessary middle parts. By
lowering the information accessibility barrier to participate, people are more motivated to engage:
the willingness to participate increases. Moreover, crowdsourcing also enhances market incentive
of branding, promotion incentives and social networking incentives. Third, crowdsourcing is
ultimately changing the power structure. The most direct influence comes from forcing the
information transparency and crowd-discussion. Residents have more power over the owner's
committee/ village committee, etc., and also this also forces the government to conduct public
participation. Last but not least, crowdsourcing leads to community empowerment: people learn
how to self-organize and become more aware of civic rights.
*
Participatory ladder in China
This study suggests that there are three types of ladders of participation operating in the Chinese
real estate development regime: a bottom up triggered civic awareness ladder, a strategy ladder
and a top-down triggered outcome ladder, linked to the emerging technology in information era.
There is no certain causal relationship in between the ladders but there are correlations and
interrelations.
*
Crowdsourcing spectrum and its influence on moving up the ladders
Depending on who the crowd is responding to, this research has found that there are basically three
types: crowd to none, crowd to one and crowd to crowd-- and each is illustrated by case studies.
Each type of crowdsourcing process can be expressed differently on the three ladders.
97
Crowdsourcing brings the potential to public participation but more importantly makes it a
necessity by moving up the awareness ladder. The crowd to none case illustrates that low cost
information transaction it easier for people to get access. This makes them more willing to learn
about a planning project, while sharing and expressing their opinion. This reflects on the ladder of
awareness that regardless of the government will, civic awareness is brought up by information
technology, and crowdsourcing allows them to react together, even form formal community
organization. On the strategy ladder, crowdsourcing enables discussion, raising opportunities for
workshops on a broader scale and partnerships in a more transpartent way. Crowdsourcing also
has indirect impact on the outcome ladder. A crowd's bottom up reactions put pressure on the
government side which forces the government to change their top-down strategies, --and
ultimately this may change the ladder of outcome.
6.2. Policy Implications
New technology always brings potential for new things. However, in crowdsourcing's case,
crowdsourcing technology brings potential for participatory planning, but more importantly, it
makes participatory planning a necessity. Information technology reduces the information
transaction cost and increased the cost and risk for government and developer to hide information
and fail to consider residents' voices. Therefore, in this context, participatory planning increases
civic awareness and enables more tools and platforms for participation. This also carries several
policy implications in different scenarios.
Scenario of status quo
First of all, crowdsourcing facilitates participation, but more importantly in the Chinese context, it
also encourages people to participate. By reducing transaction cost, increasing information
98
transparency and civic awareness, it invites more and more people to pay attention to participation.
Crowdsourcing can be directly utilized in promoting smart communities and self-organization, both
in urban communities and in urban villages. Regardless of the regulation system and government's
attitude change toward participation, crowdsourcing helps better communications in between
residents and between residents and owners committee/village committee.
Scenario of changing strategies
According to the analysis above, different participatory strategies should be applied to urban
communities and urban villages. In urban communities, crowd to one consultation is the best choice
while in urban villages, crowd to crowd, partnership and co-decision making is the best choice.
Crowd to none is a form of crowdsourcing in transforming era.
In crowdsourcing process, it is important to align the focus topic. For planning project, participation
should emphasize the influences on personal and private issues to catch people's attention and that
the crowd may make a change.
Moreover, it is also worth to rethink the participatory mechanism design. In urban community case,
there are too many levels in the whole institutional structure, leading disconnection of incentives
and malposition of powers. It is suggested that government (or other affiliated organization), rather
than the developer, or developer that is under strong supervision of the government, should initiate
the participation. The coordinator should be the owner's committee, rather than the property
management company. In urban village and suburban village, it is suggested that a third party
should play coordinator's role and conduct community outreach, have conversation with the village
committee, Development Corporation, or industrial association. Shenzhen Center for Design is a
good mediator. In both cases, it is important to have a government-affiliated organization in charge
99
of public outreach. Crowdsourcing infrastructure is also needed to foster smart community and
communication between public and private ends.
Scenario of changing the attitudes
Policies should be able to maximize incentives for public participation. Promotion incentives and
market incentives are the two major incentives for participation. Market incentives can help the
crowd go up in influence while promotion incentives can let the government step down. Promotion
incentive relies on changing the government's attitude, while market incentives relies on a robust
regulation system and civic awareness. Other incentives include social networking incentives.
It is also important to rethink who should lead the crowdsourcing process. If there is a strong
regulation system and supervising system, developers can run the community participation.
However, based on the case studies, this is not the case in China. Developer-led participation is
problematic, as exemplified by the road widening case. The regulation system is not strong enough
while government's supervising role is also missing. In this scenario, it will be better to let a
government-affiliated organization collaborate with the developer to carry out public participation
and supervision.
6.3. Limitations and future research
There are several limits to this research.
First, the case studies are limited. The two cases represent two different projects, located in
different communities, which makes them difficult to compare. Moreover, the evidence might not
be enough to support the entire framework and justify the generalizations shown in the three
ladders. Future research should involve more case studies that cover all four community types and
have consistent project types. Beside the two variables of project types and community types, time
100
is another indicator: when does crowdsourcing happen? Does it happen at the Information
collection stage, the decision making stage, the planning and design stage or the
construction/protesting stage? Crowdsourcing may also play various roles at different stages.
Future case studies should also be able to address this issue.
Moreover, this generic problem for crowdsourcing is also not discussed in this research: who
exactly constitutes the active crowd? Although crowdsourcing is a non-sample process, there may
be biases. The active crowd may not be able to represent the whole group of people. Often, as I have
learned, in an inclusive community participation process, most participants are middle aged
representatives of their family. In other scenarios, the specific type of participation remains
unknown. There might be bias but the broader question is that any approach to participation does
have bias. It is just a matter of how best to minimize it.
Third, this research emphasizes more on crowdsourcing's influence on participatory institutional
structure but stops short of addressing how crowdsourcing can facilitate planning and carry out
better plans. Due to lack of cases, this part is not touched upon but it could be an interesting topic to
explore for planners. Research topics may include but not be limited to 1) what's the most efficient
virtual and physical way of collecting crowdsourcing input? 2) What's the best way to transfer big
data into plans or designs? How do we utilize the social media data to extract valuable information?
For example, the following image is the distribution of Weibo check-in (in red) and Douban
activities (in green) amount in Shenzhen. However, there are too much noise, bias, so that it may
not directly link to urban planning. 3) What new lenses are there for looking at land use from a
more dynamic and activity/place perspective? 4) how should we understand the relationship
between virtual activity and physical activity in urban spaces , and why does this matter? This may
101
involve discussion of urban design, environmental psychology, behavioral sciences, etc. 5) finally,
are there new lenses for understanding urban spatial structure?
Figure 46 Weibo and Douban check-in in Shenzhen (by Qianqian and Liqun)
Besides its influence on participation and urban planning and urban studies, crowd-planning can
also make us rethink regulation issues. Although some of the policy implications have been
discussed, there are more yet to explore. One issue is about private construction right; under what
circumstances to individuals or groups of people can have the right to make decisions regarding
their physical environment?
Another potential application of crowdsourcing that could be explored is associated with
temporary urbanism. Crowdsourcing helps us better understand flexibility in the use of urban
space. It can be utilized better based on people's behavior and feedback.
Lastly, future researches can touch upon the shared economy. Much like Airbnb and Uber in
business field, it might be possible to develop a sound business model for crowd-planning that
collaborates with local governments, developers and citizens.
102
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Appendixl
The list of successfully matched house owners, architect teams, and the site.
HOUSE
OWNER
ARCHITECT
DEMAND
MENGXIANGJIA
Mr. Cai
Bao, Xu
Interior and
fagade
redesign;
Add caf6;
SEASHORE
STORY
Ms. Lin
Bao, xu
Yard
Redesign,
interior
upgrade
ALOHA
Ms. Suo
Deng
Interior and
fagade
redesign
MOLI GARDEN
Mr.Wang
Wu, Qin
Consistent
with the
Moli
Garden2
YUANYANG
TREE
Mr. Tang
Li
Fagade,
yard,
preserve
traditional
style
107
PICTURE
ZITENG YUAN
Mr. Yang
Li
N/A
DREAM LAND
Mr. Luo
Yang
Interior
redesign,
rooftop
LEXUN KEZHAN
Mr. Chen&Nie
Qi,Zhou,Fang
Overall
renew,
lobby and
yard
pavement,
open
kitchen, add
caf6, make
the house
brighter
SPRING
BLOSSOM
Mr. Zhang
Qi,Zhou,Fang
N/A
STARMOON BAY
Ms. Yuan
Qiu, Cheng,
Yin, et.al
Landscape,
fagade
108
N/A
XINHAI
LANXUAN
Mr. Chen
Qiu, Cheng,
Yin, et.al
Overall
renew
YUANWANG
Mr. Li
Luo, Zhang,
Duan, et.al
Redesign of
front fagade,
yard, repair
east fagade
HAIXINGSHA
Ms. Zhou
Sujin
Add roof top
room, front
yard
landscape
redesign,
open spaces,
add kitchen
HAIBIN RD3
Mr. Zhang
Chen
Overall
renew
SHUJI JIA
Mr. Zhang
Chen
109
Mr. Wang
Shen
Redesign
outward
appearance,
yard, and
living room.
Mr. Yan
Feng
N/A
DALV XIAOSHE
Mr. Guo
Liu
Overal
interior and
exterior
redesign
NIULUN BAO
Mr. Chen
He
European
CHUNPU&DIAO
LOU
SECRET
GARDEN
castle style
IT
110
OR ELEMENT
Mr. Yu
He
Minor
interior
redesign
XINGBA INN
Mr. Tao
Fu
N/A
JIAO3WEST7
Mr. Chen
Fu
N/A
XI HOUSE
Ms. Fan
Huayi
N/A
BQ CLUB HOUSE
Mr. Feng
Li
Yard
Redsign
BEIBEI JIA
Mr. Fang
Yang.xd
Interior
space
reorganize,
add glass
room on top,
Yard
redesign
111
N/A
ATHEN IMAGE
Ms. Peng
Li.qy
Lobby, Yard
redesign
European
style.
112
Appendix 2
Semi-structured interview
For residents
*
[focus topic]Regarding [daily life and physical environment], what's the most important
issue for? What you care about the most?
*
[Entity relationship]Who do you get information from? Who will you talking to? Any one in
charge of this?
*
[Incentive]Do you feel you can trust them? Why do you or do not report?
"
[attitude] Do you feel that participation is a necessary?
*
[Crowdsourcing] do you use online platforms to communicate? Do you know who your
neighbors are? If you are using the online platforms, how to you think your experience is?
For other entities
*
[focus topic] Regarding [this project], what's the most important issue for? What you care
about the most?
*
[Entity relationship]Who do you get information from? Who will you send the information
to? Any one in charge of this?
*
[Incentive]? Why you [do this] or [do not do this]? Are you under control of some other
entity?
"
[attitude] Do you feel that participation is a necessary?
"
[Crowdsourcing] do you use online platforms to communicate? Do you think media and the
crowd have an influence on you? If you are using the online platforms, how do you think
your experience is? If you, do you consider using that?
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