Technology in Context: Mediating Factors in the Utilization of Planning Technologies

Abstract

My research explores the question: how can theorists better understand the ways in which planning technologies are used by municipal planners? In the case-study municipality, a recently introduced web-GIS technology had little demonstrable success in attaining two of its stated goals: enabling increased public access to municipal geographic information and encouraging planners to produce their own maps. My research links these outcomes not only to the technologies themselves, but to organizational structure and human agency. Planners and planning theorists can gain additional insight into the impact of planning technologies through closer attention to the process through which planners come to use information technologies and the way this process both alters and is constrained by existing organizational constraints, including previously adopted technologies.