Beyond the backyard: Unraveling the geographies of citizens’ engagement in digital participatory planning

Despite the emergence of virtual spaces as arenas for public participation, the geographies of digital participation have gained relatively little attention. Besides considering who participates and why, there is an evident gap in research considering the spatial relationships between the participants of digital urban planning processes and the spaces that are the subject of their participation. This paper proposes a working concept of the spatiality of participation that distinguishes between the spaces in which participation occurs, the spatial realities of the participants, and the spaces as objects of participatory planning. Relationships between these dimensions are investigated empirically with a Public Participation GIS study set in Espoo, Finland, involving 1,731 citizens and over 6,800 future planning and development ideas mapped across the city. The results of the study support prior research observing that e-participation has the potential to spatially expand participation processes both in terms of the involved public and the spatial knowledge they produce. However, our results also show that online participation may capture spatial ties between people and places that differ from those of traditional participation modes, ranging from place-protective behaviors close to the residential location to more casual spatial attachments.