Schön, Donald A., Bish Sanyal, and William J. Mitchell, editors, High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology. Cambridge MA: MIT Press (1998).
High Technology and Low-Income Communities:
Prospects for the Positive Use of
Advanced Information Technology
Not for circulation or quotation.
7
Information Technologies That Change Relationships between Low-Income Communities and the Public and NonProfit Agencies That Serve Them
Joseph Ferreira, Jr.
What are the prospective benefits for service providers and service recipients of decentralized access t
o information about populations and their needs, service systems, and operations? Will growing access to such information be, on the whole, enfranchising for community members, or will it subject them to increased centralized control? This chapter examines particular ways in which information technologies (IT) can make land-use planning (and other aspects of metropolitan evolution) more transparent and understandable to individuals and communities. The point is not that such a use of IT is possible; rather, it is to better understand how it might empower or disenfranchise low-income communities, promote efficiency through improved self-governance, or further centralize authority in the hands of government and other large-scale data providers.
I begin by focusing on a simple, seemingly straightforward example of the use of IT: to computerize inquiries about land use and ownership of land and property in the city. This "simple" example of decentralized data access becomes complicated, however, as soon as the issues of maintenance and updating are addressed. Moreover, various IT strategies for addressing these issues have significantly different impacts on whether or not data access promotes effective decentralization and citizen empowerment. A careful examination of some of the issues and options involved in simple example improves our ability to draw inferences about how access to information can and should foster improved metropolitan governance and broader public participation in urban and regional plan
ning. The real potential for capitalizing on IT to improve governance is not simply a matter of automating government services, nor is it a question of whether or not to introduce IT. Shaping planning processes, to capitalize on IT, are crucial in improving local governance through reduced bureaucracy and devolution of authority. My reasoning is consistent with recent observations in the management literature by Shoshana Zuboff, Tom Peters, and others about IT-driven restructuring of work in U.S. corporations (Peters 1992; Zuboff 1988).
Supporting urban revitalization with data and information systems
The role and relevance of information in urban planning is a broad, complex, and much-debated issue (Harris 1989; Innes 1995, Schön 1995). Here I focus on a few practices (of data gathering and analysis) that are common in urban revitalization, concentrating on how the design and implementation of a metropolitan area's information infrastructure can affect the usefulness of such practices to constituencies typically involved in urban revitalization.笑一笑
Urban planning can be about the public investment, authorization, and support for improved infrastructure (roads, transit, water and sewer, etc.), and for other public works and services (parks, buildings, public housing, garbage collection, job training, public safety, health care, etc.). It can also
be about the regulatory processes that set, monitor, and enforce land-use and zoning regulations, environmental controls, economic development incentives, design guidelines, and the like. Land-use functions-the focus of this chapter-are typically undertaken by institutions that exist in different sectors (public, private, and nonprofit) and at different levels of government (federal, state, metropolitan, city, and neighborhood). In Boston, for example, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) plays a key role in land-use planning. It is usually responsible for planning studies of major real estate investment projects such as Government Center, the Prudential Center complex, and more recently, the controversial "megaplex" proposals to develop a convention center and related commercial and sports facilities in South B oston. But, the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), which owns and manages housing for more than 10 percent of the city's residents, is the lead agency for two Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-financed urban revitalization demonstration programs costing more than $80 million over a five-year period. Neither authority is completely under the mayor's control, nor are they the only citywide agencies with significant authority in land-use planning. Boston's Public Facilities Department (PFD) is responsible for l and and facilities owned by the city (including, for example, abandoned property); it is also heavily involved in Boston's "Empowerment Zone" planning.[1] Other federal-, state-, and metropolitan-level agencies and authorities are also significant players in urban redevelopment. HUD and the Massachusetts Housin
功夫梦韩雯雯图片g Finance Agency (MHFA) are major underwriters of subsidized housing in the region; the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority (MWRA) is in the midst of multi-billion dollar projects to upgrade the region's water and sewer system; and the Central Artery Project is managing the $7 billion decade-long transportation improvement project to sink Boston's Central Artery and build a third harbor tunnel. Also, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) and related transit and transportation planning agencies have a considerable impact (through their control of transit routes and transportation investment) on the accessibility of inner-city residents to jobs and services; and federal and state environmental protection agencies regulate the reuse of the many "brownfields"[2] in inner- city areas that have questionable land-use history.
Private agencies are also important in land-use planning. The Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership (MBHP), a regional nonprofit organization, manages the pass-through of state and federal housing subsidies for more than five thousand households. Along with large landlords, community development corporations, neighborhood and church associations, private developers, and the like, such groups represent significant interests and planning/management capabilities that are vocal, more or less organized to represent their interests, and likely to grow in size and/or number as federal efforts continue to decentralize control of prog rams for housing, economic development, and social services.
To develop new land-use plans and proposals (or to form opinions as new opportunities and proposals surface), all of these agencies typically spend considerable energy researching and analyzing land use and ownership in the neighborhoods surrounding the sites that are targeted in the plans. This work (along with other related studies) is then used to develop tables, charts, and maps that summarize patterns of land-use and ownership and that estimate the size and nature of changes in both the physical and socioeconomic environment that are likely to result from one or another of the proposed changes in land use.[3] For large proposals with relatively formal review and approval processes, the results of this work are typically included in an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report and/or in various related planning reports and documents that critique, amend, or expand upon the EIA. In the case of large and controversial projects, the public review process can be long and complex; and public (or mandated private) funds are often used for separate studies and technical reports, so different interest groups can be more evenly balanced as they debate relevant issues and expectations.
The land-use and ownership studies are only one part of a complex land-use planning process, and their effects on urban revitalization are indirect. Nevertheless, they help us explore the planning uses of emerging computing technologies, because they show how unexpected difficulties can arise in a s
eemingly simple data-processing setting. And, these difficulties highlight a generic issue. Much urban planning focuses on understanding places and spatial relationships. Computing technologies have only recently had the horsepower and computer graphics tools to track, digest, and visualize complex urban settings. But to understand the plans and build consensus on action, we need to integrate and reinterpret many data sources now dispersed among agencies and groups that are administratively isolated and focused on different issues and goals. Moreover, they often use different accounting systems to name, measure, and value urban activity.
Although I am optimistic about our learning to deal with these difficulties, the devil is in the details. In forecasting the impacts of computing technologies, it is often easy to take for granted elementary operations that bog down when they assume the scale and complexity needed to address real-world settings. This is especially true if, as I believe, the important benefits of data-processing systems for urban planning are not so much in gaining access to detailed urban data, but in having decentralized access in a way that allows meaningful dialogue as part of an ongoing planning process of design, discussion, and consensus building across many diverse and relatively autonomous groups. With this in mind, I examine how Boston's parcel database is used to identify and categorize land-use and ownership patterns. I then discuss how emerging information technologies might assist us in the development of improved planning for urban revitalization.
Researching land-use and ownership patterns
As suggested earlier, many neighborhood planning activities-from economic development studies and urban revitalization projects to community organizing, community development corporations (CDC) development, and site planning-begin with a study of patterns of land use and ownership. In the old days this meant spending considerable time in the Assessor's Office and at the Registry of Deeds. Today, most parcel ownership and land-use records are computerized, so that information can be obtained by searching digital databases for a parcel's address, owner name, and the like. A sample of such parcel data for one-to-three family residential housing in East Boston is shown in table 7.1.[4] The addresses and owner names are shown for several dozen residential parcels, along with their lot sizes and the February 1, 1996, assessed values for the land and buildings. In many U.S. cities and counties electronic access to such parcel data is provided from terminals in a limited number of
government offices through the use of database applications. These allow the user to select from a limited set of text-based inquiry "screens" in order to find and display information about a single parcel. Providing citizens with direct access to these terminals in government offices became relatively common during the 1980s. More recently, some cities and counties in the United States ha
ve begun to provide more flexible and widespread access to parcel data through use of the Internet or CD-ROM distribution and, in recent months, through map-based interfaces that make it easy to identify relevant properties and compare the characteristics of neighboring properties.[5 ]
Table 7.1. Sample Parcel Data for Residential Housing in East Boston.
PARCEL_ID OWNER NO STREET USE LANDVAL BUILDVA LOTSIZE
(dollars)(dollars)(sq. ft.)
---------- -------------------- ---- ------------- --- ------- ------- -------
010******* PASCUCCI CARLO 105A PUTNAM ST R3 39400 55500 1,150
010******* MASTRORILLO ANGELO P 197 LEXINGTON ST R3 39400 59600 1,150
010******* HASELTON PETER 199 LEXINGTON ST R3 39400 48400 1,150
010******* DILLON KELLEY A 201 LEXINGTON ST R3 39400 73400 1,150
010******* DIGIROLAMO JOHN F 203 LEXINGTON ST R2 40900 73700 2,010
010******* BOTTE FRANK A 205 LEXINGTON ST R3 41600 65100 2,500
010******* PORCELLA RACHELA 209 LEXINGTON ST R3 41600 79700 2,500
010******* CIOTO ROBERT 245H LEXINGTON ST R1 39200 37900 1,238
010******* CAHILL STEPHEN F 245 LEXINGTON ST R3 41200 72300 2,250
010******* MIANO MARIA ETAL 247 LEXINGTON ST R3 39800 54300 1,838
010******* SHEA RAFFAELA 249 LEXINGTON ST R3 40100 67800 1,835
010******* CARUSO SYLVIA HELEN 31 PRESCOTT ST R1 39300 42700 1,263
010******* PATTI RALPH ETAL 33 PRESCOTT ST R1 39700 70000 1,650
010******* MELE ANTHONY 35 PRESCOTT ST R2 39700 68400 1,650
010******* STEWART ROBERT 37 PRESCOTT ST R3 39600 87900 1,700
010******* SLOWEY JAMES J 252 PRINCETON ST R3 41600 95300 2,500
010******* BOSSI MICHAEL ETAL 250 PRINCETON ST R3 41600 99200 2,500
010******* TONTODONATO SANDRA M 248 PRINCETON ST R1 41600 61900 2,500
010******* MARSIGLIA MARILYN G 246 PRINCETON ST R1 41600 43100 2,500
010******* CAPO JOHN A & MARY B 244 PRINCETON ST R2 41600 61200 2,500
Source: Boston Assessing Office data from February 1, 1996.
Parcel Records for Boston, Massachusetts.
Compared with poring over printed records of parcel information, electronic access speeds up research into land use and ownership. This is especially true now that Internet or CD-ROM access can run queries from a desktop compu ter (rather than a customized dial-up terminal) so that the results can be "cut-and-pasted" into the neighborhood planner's spreadsheet or report. The latest database technologies and mapping software enable users to construct spatial and textual queries; find, map, and aggregate significant amounts of digested parcel data; and download these data to the desktop in user-determined formats that become local tables, maps, and spreadsheets.
方中信主演的电影Using IT to accelerate the process of researching land use and ownership is a typical example of enhanced efficiency through IT automation. But, this "speed-up" effect is only the most obvious of the possible impacts we might imagine; and, as it turns out, it may not make much of a dent in the considerable amount of time th at our prototypical neighborhood planner must spend studying land use and ownership.[6] We shall see why in the following two sections. In subsequent sections, I shall suggest how computerizing parcel records might result in a deeper restructuring of neighborhood planning activities.
Exploring Land Ownership Patterns
A typical land- use and ownership study might examine in detail the records for a few hundred to perhaps a thousand parcels. Boston has approximately 138,000 parcels distributed among 16 primary neighborhoods, 22 political wards, 64 sub-neighborhoods, and about 4,500 city blocks.[7] Hence, a typical land-use and ownership study might focus on an area smaller than a BRA sub-neighborhood, one that ranges from a few dozen to a hundred blocks. To explore the characteristics of computerized parcel records, however, we need not limit ourselves to a sub-neighborhood. Since we have access to a "snapshot" of 1996 Boston parcel records stored on a fast network server with relational database management tools, we can explore land ownership patterns by sorting, aggregati
ng, and summarizing the parcel data for all of Boston.[8] By doing so, it will be easier to spot data ambiguities and problems that might have an impact on the accuracy and generality of a small area study.
For example, table 7.2 lists the owners of the largest amounts of residential property throughout Boston. The listing is the output of a query written in Structured Query Language (SQL), which has become the lingua franca of database interoperability.[9] For each unique owner name in the official records, the query counts the number of parcels owned and sums the total lot size and the total assessed value.[10] Since we have been discussing neighborhood planning, we focus only on those 80,842 parcels zoned for residential use (that is, those with a land-use classification code beginning with "R").[11] Of these 80,842 residential parcels, 3,213 were owned by the top-20 owners shown in table 7.2.
Table 7.2. Residential Holdings of the Largest Boston Property Owners (using "official" owner names as of February 1, 1996).
OWNER PARCELS TOTVAL_K ACRES
($ x 1000)
------------------------------ -------- ---------- ---------
CITY OF BOSTON 1,589 506 271.9彩云追月钢琴谱
CITY OF BOSTON BY FCL 944 168 81.2
102 7,664 8.3
BOSTON REDEVELOPMENTAUTH 83 0 11.9
CITY OF BOSTON FCL 71 0 4.5
WEST ROX CRUSHED STONE CO 46 883 8.6
BOSTON HOUSING AUTHORITY 37 0 4.5
CITY OF BOSTON MUNICIPAL CP 35 0 3.3
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 35 95 12.1
SAMIA LEONARD J 34 7,135 3.3
MERCURI ANTHONY C 30 547 5.3
ABBEY ST GERMAIN LP 28 9,554 0.8
W ROX CRUSHED STONE CO 27 1,500 41.7
OBRIEN PATRICK 24 4,012 4.1
HYDE SQUARE CO OP 22 1,929 1.6
买古筝RAND MORRIS TRST 22 91 0.5
FEDERAL HOME LOAN MGT CP 21 2,398 2.2
JONES JOHN C 21 1,189 1.7
SECRETARY OF HOUSING 21 1,651 2.5
TODESCA CHARLES ETAL 21 456 2.5
A look at the owners' names in table 7.2 suggests that a problem must be solved in order to make go
od use of this computerized listing of the official parcel records. It is not surprising to find that the city of Boston owns most of the parcels. But the city is also second, fourth, fifth, seventh, and eighth in this top-20 listing. The BY FCL in CITY OF BOSTON BY FCL stands for "by foreclosure" and represents
foreclosures for nonpayment of taxes. Seven hundred forty-four such parcels are listed, but another seventy-one parcels list "CITY OF BOSTON BY FCL" as the owner and are presumably more of the same. The BRA, the BHA, and the CITY OF BOSTON MUNICIPAL CP are also among the top-20 residential landowners and should probably be treated as municipal ownership in any land ownership study. Note also that one hundred and two residential parcels have the owner name missing and that the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, the FEDERAL HOME LOAN MGT CP, and the SECRETARY OF HOUSING make the top-20 owner list. Almost all of the U.S.-owned parcels are on the Stony Brook Reservation in Hyde Park, whereas th e Federal Home Loan and Secretary of Housing parcels are spread around town and probably represent foreclosed residential property owned (as of February 1996) by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation and HUD. In all likelihood, these properties should also be treated as "municipal ownership" in a land ownership study aimed, say, at understanding property ownership for the purpose of designing a program of urban revitalization. Difficulties in Categorizing Owner Names
If the parcel data recorded ownership in a way that matched the needs of such a study, then access to the computerized records through powerful data query tools such as SQL would be especially useful. But variations in spelling and the need to group official names into broader categ ories of ownership complicate our efforts to capitalize on the speed and cross-referencing capabilities of tools for processing digital parcel records. Of course, spelling errors could be corrected, and we could take steps to categorize ownership. But there are several ways of making such corrections and categories, and the choice can make more difference for planning and policy analysis purposes than we might at first think.
If the only issue were an occasional spelling error in owner names, then almost any solution would be effective. Occasional errors would not have a big impact on our totals and summary statistics, and we could still save a lot of the legwork involved in chasing down owner names for the bulk of the parcels recorded correctly in the database. But a closer look at the 1996 parcel database reveals more than an occasional spelling error or omitted name. The West Roxbury Crushed Stone Company shows up twice in the top-20 list with a total of seventy-three parcels of (mostly unusable) residential land. The owner name, WEST ROX CRUSHED STONE CO, is associated with forty-six of the parcels, and the other twenty-seven parcels are recorded under the owner name W ROX CRU
石欣卉SHED STONE CO. The two spellings might result from different choices about how to abbreviate the long name in order to fit it within the thirty characters allowed in the parcel database. The database comes from official "owner of record" information generated when the deed of ownership is recorded. Hence, standardizing the owner names used to record land ownership would not be an easy task-especially since the "owner" might include multiple individuals, corporations, trusts, and the like.
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