Digital citizen participation has become a permanent format in democratic societies. Although early, comprehensive and transparent participation is key to successful planning processes, there are few encouraging experiments with multimedia participation approaches. Existing ones are often not tailored to the needs of citizens. The use of different forms of presentation, such as thematic maps, diagrams, aerial photographs, videos and animations, has been used only sporadically.

The project starts at this point and develops application-specific integrative solutions. In addition to CityScopes and touchtables, we are focusing on mixed reality approaches via smartphone, tablet and VR glasses, as these can improve spatial awareness and create experiences that are shareable in real time.

Following the goal of creating an intuitive and accessible application that appeals to both young tech-savvy users and older generations alike, gamification elements are also introduced into the process.

As increasing citizen input exceeds the analysis capacities of planning offices, machine learning or natural language processing techniques help to quickly extract relevant key messages. In the long run, PaKOMM could contribute to more transparent, effective, and efficient decision-making in collaborative participation processes.

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