The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract Information is a source of power in the planning process. This article begins by assessing five perspectives of the planner's use of information: those of the technician, the incremental pragmatist, the liberal advocate, the structuralist, and the “progressive.” Then several types of misinformation (inevitable or unnecessary, ad hoc or systematic) are distinguished in a reformulation of bounded rationality in planning, and practical responses by planning staff are identified. The role and ethics of planners acting as sources of misinformation are considered. In practice planners work in the face of power manifest as the social and political (mis)-man-agement of citizens' knowledge, consent, trust, and attention. Seeking to enable planners to anticipate and counteract sources of misinformation threatening public serving, democratic planning processes, the article clarifies a practical and politically sensitive form of “progressive” planning practice.

Planning in the Face of Power.

We estimated the world’s technological capacity to store, communicate, and compute information, tracking 60 analog and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007. In 2007, humankind was able to store 2.9 × 10 20 optimally compressed bytes, communicate almost 2 × 10 21 bytes, and carry out 6.4 × 10 18 instructions per second on general-purpose computers. General-purpose computing capacity grew at an annual rate of 58%. The world’s capacity for bidirectional telecommunication grew at 28% per year, closely followed by the increase in globally stored information (23%). Humankind’s capacity for unidirectional information diffusion through broadcasting channels has experienced comparatively modest annual growth (6%). Telecommunication has been dominated by digital technologies since 1990 (99.9% in digital format in 2007), and the majority of our technological memory has been in digital format since the early 2000s (94% digital in 2007).

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The World’s Technological Capacity to Store, Communicate, and Compute Information

eCommerce adoption in developing countries: a model and instrument

O ne of the continuing challenges of the information revo lution of the past few decades is that the important "stuff" of the technology is beyond the capabilities of our human senses. We can't see the bits in our computers or the electrons that represent them. We can write our thoughts and translate those thoughts into software code, but we can only imagine the logic flows, branches, and data movements that occur as that code is converted to electrons and executed. We send all these electrons into networks, where the electrons that represent the code are chunked into packets, disassembled and assembled, causing our thoughts to visit places and follow routes that our physical bodies could never go. We call this imaginary world "virtual," as though the label makes it real. We create analogs to what our senses can deal with. We talk about files and architectures and highways, pages and webs, all of which we sort of understand in the real world, thus giving us Slippery handles on the virtual. The truth is scary: our physical bodies are irrelevant in the virtual world. William Mitchell, Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT, spends 225 pages trying to relate the two worlds, but early on he tells us that he knows better by showing us the famous New Yorker cartoon of two dogs in front of a personal computer saying, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog"...or if you're tall or short, young or old, strong or sick...all of which are crucial in the physical world. In many ways, what Mitchell is doing in this book is important. Creating analogs from the unknown to the known helps us manage the acceptance of the new technology. Mitchell shows these comparisons explicitly in his section headings; e.g., "Schoolhouses/Virtual Campuses," "Galleries/Virtual Museums," "Tangible Goods/Intellectual Property." These analogs not only help us better understand and accept the novel and unknown, but the analogies help us apply the new in ways that far extend the capabilities of the old. So, in our virtual museum in one time and place, we are able to see paintings that physically exist in galleries tens of thousands of miles apart, without the burden of crowds or jet lag. The virtual campus can bring to the most remote schoolhouse the best lessons of the best teachers, regardless of where or when those lessons were physically articulated. But extending the old capabilities can be either a way station to or a side track away from the ultimate benefits of the virtual world. The technology to let go of our physical selves is ready, but our society is not. Our past, built on what our senses can tell us, is an anchor keeping us stuck in the harbor of known, preventing us from sailing into the sea of unknown. Looking at birds for thousands of years got us only Icarus. It was not poor ships that kept Vikings and Phoenicians close to shore; it was fear of the dragons on the maps where the known seas ended. Again, Mitchell knows this and hints about it a bit. For example, in his discussion of Bookstores/Bit Stores, he talks about the old world of the large urban newspaper: "When the Chicago Tribune Tower was constructed, it stood as the proudly visible center of a vast collection and distribution system and as an emblem of the power of the press. Every day the news flowed in and the printed papers flowed out to the surrounding metropolis. But on the infobahn, where every node is potentially both a publication and a consumption point, such centralized concentrations of activity will be supplanted by millions of dispersed fragments." Mitchell thus hints at hut doesn't mention the long-envisioned world of Xanadu described by Ted Nelson, arguably the father of hypertext, a real break with the linear flow of the printing press paradigm, possible only in cyberspace.

City of bits: space, place and the infobahn

The impacts of a school closure on neighbourhood social cohesion: narratives from Invercargill, New Zealand.

Both Geographic Information Systems (GIS) implementation successes and failures can be attributed to many factors, some that have little or nothing to do with the technology. While the discourse in the developed world has shifted from examining GIS implementation in isolation, developing countries appear to be still bogged down by many institutional barriers that impede implementation. In this context, an integrative implementation framework that takes into consideration politics and policy issues is developed to understand, explain, and assess GIS implementation in developing countries. The uniqueness of country-specific problems is acknowledged and juxtaposed against a body of theory in order to evaluate GIS implementation efforts. Based on reflective accounts of implementation efforts in three developing countries, four overarching characteristics of successful GIS implementation across country contexts are identified. These include clarity in problem definition, forging strategic alliances, incremental planning, and developing local knowledge. GIS implementation is likely to occur only when individuals and organisations creatively challenge existing norms, organisational defensive routines, and inefficient bureaucratic practices. Therefore, successful GIS implementation in developing countries is a likely outcome of critical reflective practice that relies on the capacity of empowered individuals and groups rather than solely on organisational structures.

GIS Implementation in Developing Countries: Learning from Organisational Theory and Reflective Practice

PART I: Participatory Planning: Why does it matter?- 1. Dilemmas in Contemporary Planning.- 2. The Digital Revolution.- 3. A Public Participation GIS (PPGIS) Frameword.- 4. PPGIS: State of the Practice.- PART II: Three Narratives.- 5. Politics and Participation in Boston's South End.- 6. Planning to Preserve Community Character in Oak Park, Illinois.- 7. Chicagoland's Search for Common Ground.- 8. Issues in PPGIS Implementation.- PART III: The Future of PPGIS.- 9. PPGIS as Critical Reflective Practice.- 10. Where to, from here?

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Geographic Information Science and Public Participation

In the last chapter, I described a 1995 settlement negotiated between a powerful corporation (an insurance company) and relatively powerless homeowners In this classic David vs Goliath scenario, against all odds, the homeowners emerged victorious Digital technologies, data, and information, anchored by sustained community activism influenced settlement negotiations In this chapter, I propose that the roots of this particular type of digitally mediated community advocacy were established a long time ago – in the late 1960s in fact In this chapter, I trace the history of the digital revolution that occurred in parallel with the more prominent civil rights revolution in the United States

The Digital Revolution

Within the Aotearoa/New Zealand context, this article identifies opportunities for, as well as constraints on, using participatory research to address environmental health concerns. In New Zealand, principles of partnership fundamental to the Treaty of Waitangi, and the requirements for consultation within the Resource Management Act, provide a framework for participatory approaches. Participatory environmental health research integrates knowledge from various scientific and community sources. It also fosters the innovation, evaluation, and sharing of information that new public health approaches demand. As an emerging field in Aotearoa/New Zealand, it must draw on experience from resource management, rural development, and public health research and practice. Water quality is used as an example of the complexity of environmental health issues and of the potential benefits of engaging stakeholders where long-term health and well-being require balancing ecosystem integrity, economic viability, and social processes.

Laxmi Ramasubramanian

Papers

The impacts of a school closure on neighbourhood social cohesion: narratives from Invercargill, New Zealand.

GIS Implementation in Developing Countries: Learning from Organisational Theory and Reflective Practice

Geographic Information Science and Public Participation

The Digital Revolution

Participatory Environmental Health Research in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Constraints and Opportunities