Abstract
With the development of geospatial technologies and the availability of machine-readable data, local governments constantly increase the share of IT in their total spendings. In the UK only, local governments spend over £1 billion on sourcing and supporting software annually. While digitalisation of governance has been the trend for over 20 years the approach that cities take to that transformation vary significantly. In our presentation, we will focus on technologies in urban spatial planning and land management, in particular, on how GIS-enabled calculations of infrastructure accessibility are used in various governance environments. Core examples analysed include People Near Transit (PNT) used by OECD, and the Public Transport Accessibility Level tool (PTAL) in London; and more comprehensive models that calculate time-travel to multiple travel destinations, such as the Land Use and Public Transport Accessibility Indexing Model in Greater Sydney, the City of Johannesburg’s nodal planning tools, and SaavutettavuusTarkastelut in Helsinki. Finally, the ongoing work on building similar tools for the city of Izhevsk and Johannesburg will be critically reviewed. The results of the analysis demonstrate a split in how these tools are used in policy implementation. It suggests that the different approach to these tools will lead to two models of policy implementation: one leaning towards law-enforcement and the other leaning towards policy-as-a-service, incentivising compliance and thus reducing public spending. Outcomes of the analysis could be valuable for local government authorities, in particular to spatial policymakers, transport planners and software procurement specialists. It could be further used to run a more comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of the different types of software systems that include not only software running costs but law enforcement and compliance. Last but not least, the private sector could use the outcomes to adjust its product strategies and sales.
