چكيده به لاتين
The Internet as a low-threshold communication channel provides the possibilities to exchange knowledge, communicate with each other and act outside of the traditional frameworks to nearly everybody around the globe. Therefore, digitalization processes, resulted by diffusion of information and communication technologies, might have massively transformed the contemporary urban settings. The essential elements in this contemporary urban setting are flow of communication and information exchange that are happening through networks. Recently, the widespread of smartphones and tablets with their unique features (e.g. embedded sensors, multi-channel communication, high-speed mobile Internet, intuitive design and portability) have changed the interaction of citizens in and with the urban environment. Furthermore, the new science of cities understands cities as dynamic setting embedded with flows and networks between individual actors and the urban environment, which entails urban planning as a collective process. This indicates that the planning approach has experienced that beside top-down approaches, bottom-up perspective in decision making processes is occurring. Given this fact, today it is no longer the question whether the public should be involved, but rather with which methods a broader spectrum of citizens can cooperate in planning processes. Thus, the participatory methods should be evolved aligned with the new characteristics of the contemporary urban settings and utilize the potentials offered by mobile technologies to enhance the citizen engagement processes in urban planning. Hence, this project’s goal is to investigate a relatively new emerging form of participation as Mobile Participation (mParticipation), which refers to the use of mobile devices (mobile phones, smart phones and tablets) in participation processes. This research seeks to understand the concept, advantages, disadvantages and specific features of mobile participation, the impact of the use of mobile technologies in communication between different actors, information flow as well as citizens' networks (as essential elements in contemporary urban environments). Examine the impact of using mobile technologies (smartphones and tablets) on output and quality, and finally application design. This provides a comprehensive review of the literature on current discussions on digitalization in urban environments (smart cities), citizen participation in the urban planning discourse (participatory planning), and the characteristics of citizen participation in the information and technology age ( E-Partner Mobile Partnership). In order to study the mobile participation aspects and practical processes, several mobile participation projects are evaluated and typified and an application (Shahrmoon) is designed. This analysis is enriched with 15 expert interviews. The results of this research project describe the potentials, limitations and characteristics of mobile participation in urban planning. In addition, the effects of participation in the flow of information, the relationship between stakeholders, the citizen network and the quality of the output of the partnership are clarified, and finally the advantages, disadvantages and new ideas for upgrading the designed application are collected. Although mobile participation provides new and unique opportunities for urban planning processes, the results of this study show that there is still room for knowledge production in this field of study. In addition, the continuous advancement of technology in the field of mobile technologies forms the field of mobile participation as a dynamic field of research.
