From insight to action: An integrated assessment framework for digital citizen participation in data-centric urban practices

The integration of digital technologies into urban practices has expanded opportunities for citizen participation and enabled more effective data-driven decision-making. Despite these advancements, challenges such as complex data management and equitable public engagement persist. These challenges are amplified in densely populated cities like Singapore, where the demand for effective and inclusive digital participation frameworks is paramount. Accordingly, this research aims to develop an assessment framework specifically for digital participation processes in such urban contexts through a two-stage analytical methodology. The first stage involves semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, including urban designers and planners, authorities, and residents, to explore challenges and perspectives qualitatively. These qualitative data are then rigorously analyzed using thematic coding. The second stage involves opinion surveys, the results of which are subjected to Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to yield a quantitative assessment tool. The findings identify critical success factors, including the need for context-specific interventions, active engagement between residents and designers, integration of multi-scale datasets, and the use of structured evaluation metrics. By employing this integrated approach, the research provides a comprehensive and actionable framework to enhance digital citizen participation in urban contexts for both macro-environmental and micro-cultural decisions in post-participation. •This study explores complexities of digital technologies, enabling large-scale, inclusive citizen participation and shared understanding across urban scales.•Two-stage data analysis with interviews and surveys uncovers stakeholder roles, participatory analytics, and data management in dense urban settings.•The results indicate the importance of post-participation for informed decision-making.•Context-specific strategies and multi-scale data integration are key in post-participation.•The findings provide actionable insights for enhancing digital citizen participation and fostering inclusive data-centric design and planning solutions.