Influence of Information Technology

Innovation in information and communications technology is changing the way in which people acquire and react to information. The current buzz is the Internet.

The planning system is constantly evolving in response to political ideas, social preferences, economic prosperity and the technical fabric of society. Changes in citizen representation, as a result of the development and spread of the Internet, presents the opportunity to innovate and explore new methods of planning. The Internet presents planners with the ability to considerably enhance the planning system. The electronic, as opposed to the paper medium opens up exciting opportunities both for the professional planner and the planning system as a whole. However, enhancement should only take place under regulation, both in terms of standards and techniques. The Internet is becoming as widespread as the telephone is in the home today the planning system should be ready to utilise it. Some statistics show that 16,8 per cent of Portuguese people older than 15 have access to Internet, one of the world’s Internet top 15 users. Also the Portuguese domains and servers largely grew up from less than 100 in 1995 to more than 4.000 nowadays.

Most important is the fact that Internet is changing people’s life and relationships, and the way people face the society. Internet allows people to enlarge their work reliability. A new society is emerging, based on the structural transformation that is occurring in the relationships of production, in the relationships of power, and in the relationships of experience.

We are living on an information economy commanded by productivity and competitiveness processes. Firms, regions, countries and economic units of all kinds gear their production relationships to maximise innovation and flexibility, to achieve better levels of productivity and competitiveness. In the present age information technology, and the cultural capacity to use it, are essential in the performance of the new production function. And the education and the capacity of accessing higher levels of education will distinguish those who can reprogram him/herself toward the continuous changing tasks of the production process from those who are not able to reprogram themselves, condemned to assign generic labour. These last workers are of course faced almost every with the danger of being replaced by machines, and their jobs are just depending on the latest technology evolution and on business decisions or waiting for the next round of downsizing. This will lead to unemployment and to society exclusion as never seen, contributing to the growth of social problems and to the criminal activities.

Relations of power are being changed as well: the globalisation of information and capital, the multi-lateralisation of power institutes, and decentralisation of authority to regional and local governments brings up a new form of power, perhaps a network state. The political system is being voided of power, without loosing influence.

The relationships of experience are also being transformed in the Information Age based on the actual relationship experience it is going through a transition process to a pattern of social interaction.

This endlessly changing era that we are going through presents us too many unknown consequences, not only economically and socially, but also at the urban space settlement and at the transportation levels. The growing of home working permits people to work far away from the company to which their are working for, having consequences on housing locations, especially moving to the outskirts of cities, contributing to the decreasing and degradation of the cities historical centres, as they are being left out. With the advent of home working and online shopping there will be also consequences on the transport systems as people will not need to move so frequently as now, presenting effects on public transportation, individual transports and goods transportation. The connection with the net will be imperative for firms who want to succeed, but they will not disregard their location near the main motorways, railway stations, and air/seaports as people will demand fast delivers as the information is transferred.

A real concern in the planning process is the level of public participation, as it must be seen as one of the most important parts of the planning process. The Internet offers the planning profession the skills to achieve a high level of public participation at a low cost, both in terms of time and money. A comparison between the traditional methods and the use of the Internet in consulting the public during the production of a Development Plan is made on the table below.

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Of course that high levels of public involvement depend on the public access to the Internet, currently, those in higher education and business dominate the access. So measures must be taken to prevent this, measures devoted to people with low incomes and excluded groups also (e.g. Programme Aveiro – Digital City, that will be presented at the Best of Planning Forum). These measures should be complemented with a declared investment on education and access to information. These two factors will be the critical quality in differentiating the included from the excluded of the Information Society.

Information Technology and Internet also provides professional planners with wider learning about the best planning practices all over the world, learning about particular plans, actions, activities, etc. Nowadays Internet also provides an extremely good tool for the urban planning. Virtual Cities help planners to get a more realistic vision of their projects, and to model city step by step analysing the results virtually.