Informing and Interacting

Municipal planning departments often struggle to provide citizen participation opportunities that are informative and engaging. E-government tools hold the potential to enhance traditional forms of citizen participation. This paper examines the use of information and communication technology e-government tools to promote citizen participation in the planning process. The analysis is based on an examination of planning department Web sites for the 582 U.S. cities with a 2000 census population of 50,000 or more. Principal findings are that while most of the reviewed Web sites provide only basic planning information, there are a growing number of sites offering enhanced information as well as interaction tools.