What is E-Participant

Municipalities that plan have both a legal obligation and a professional directive to incorporate citizens into the planning process, but garnering sufficient and diverse citizen participation is often a struggle. Online participation tools as a component of e-government provide a potential venue for enhancing the participation process. However, e-government participation raises challenges pertaining to trust, exclusion, and responsiveness. This chapter contributes to the understanding of these issues by analyzing how municipalities in the U.S. view the e-participant. The analysis is based on an ongoing longitudinal study that examines planning department web sites for U.S. cities with 2000 census populations of 50,000 or more. The authors’ findings highlight respondents’ views of online tools as a means to further efficiency and citizen satisfaction, rather than as a means by which to potentially enhance discussion of community issues.