This article is written by Juan Vila, director of open government in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina

Public infrastructure is a fundamental part of any city and its development: it impacts the quality of life of the residents by defining the type of public service they receive. Transportation, public spaces, parks, sidewalks and roads define the vital urban fabric in which we live, move, enjoy, work and much more.

Currently, many governments are faced with the challenge of adapting their infrastructure to complex and multi-causal problems like environmental threats, inequality or population growth. This management by the states is crucial when we consider that the United Nations estimates 68% of the population will live in cities by 2050. In Latin America that figure grows significantly up to 81%.

The OECD has identified governance as one of the primary challenges for successful infrastructure. When citizens aren’t heard in infrastructure plans, projects often face delays due to lawsuits or mistakes, which means they can’t meet the deadlines or go over budget. This is not a good way to provide public services.

Fortunately, governments are increasingly aware that including citizens in urban development management is essential to achieve innovative and impactful solutions together. For this reason, open government might be a guide to develop the cities of the future.

Platform cities

Open government can provide innovative ways of governing through the use of civic technology, better standards, open data and spaces for dialogue and collaboration. Adding the voice of citizens provides a framework to locate where the most urgent problems are, while opening information so that citizens can monitor what the government is doing and base their demands on evidence.

Moreover, generating, analysing and disseminating relevant data allows us to address this infrastructure challenge within a comprehensive governance improvement plan. And at the same time, open government increases transparency and opens information related to contracting and execution processes in infrastructure works, which is important because it helps to understand how the government spends the public money and keeps public works accountable.

Creating an urban planning platform that can translate large amounts of infrastructure data into a simple visualisation is essential to deliver data to the public

Creating an urban planning platform that can translate large amounts of infrastructure data into a simple visualisation is essential to deliver this type of data to the public. These platforms deliver on a fundamental goal of being able to offer clear, quality information that enables informed and evidence-based participation. Seeing data on public works or urban planning standards allows involved actors to obtain the necessary information to participate, monitor, propose analysis or foster new developments.

BA Obras is a platform that was created to communicate public works to citizens in a new and innovative way. It displays more than a thousand individual projects where you can obtain information about the work, start and end dates, bidding amounts, the contractor in charge, the contract that awards the work, description, and details of it, among other data.

There are now eight cities in Latin America that have utilised the Open Source software of BA Obras, housed in the repository of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Seeing the city in a new light

In Buenos Aires, there are already many successful examples of citizens being brought together to co-create public spaces. For example, in 2019 participatory conferences were conducted with the local community to decide how to transform an old trainway shed. Through the initiative of more than 200 neighbours, a once abandoned area was remodelled to include a park, a public library, and workshop spaces.

Buenos Aires has also created Open Map BA. This tool opens and unifies urban data previously spread out among diverse areas of government. It is now gathered on one website so that it can be directly accessed. In the process, it manages to translate thousands of pages of regulations and sources of information in an interactive site that citizens can use to explore each lot of the city in detail.

The life of a city is not only in government hands. It is also shaped by private activity and economic initiatives that influence the urban fabric

But the life of a city is not only in government hands. It is also shaped by private activity and economic initiatives that influence the urban fabric. For example, the construction of buildings, houses, offices, shops, among others.

There is a demand for strategic information — such as business inspections, land use permits or construction rules — that feed into urban planning data in general. And that is why some governments have decided to move forward with the opening of urban data and the creation of platforms that visualise it to make it accessible to all. For example, Barcelona developed Geoportal BCN with all the urban data from the city, or ZoLa from New York, which displays the zoning data through layers of maps. Both of these platforms were an inspiration for the creation of Open Map BA.

The initiatives taken in Buenos Aires and elsewhere gives us the opportunity to find co-created solutions to the challenges big cities face. In this sense, we believe the answers have to be developed collaboratively. This can only be done by listening to citizens, strengthening the spaces for dialogue and citizen participation, as the spirit of open government mandates. That is why, ultimately, we democratise information about urban planning. — Juan Vila

(Picture Credit: Unsplash)