Ich sehe was, was du auch siehst. Über die Möglichkeiten von Augmented und Virtual Reality für die digitale Beteiligung von Bürger:innen in der Bau- und Stadtplanung

Digital government opens up opportunities to critically reflect on administrative and government processes and to rethink them accordingly. In the past, citizen participation processes were subject to numerous challenges, but e‑participation offers opportunities to combine them with modern technologies that enable low-threshold participation. In the research project Take Part, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, innovative forms of citizen participation in urban and construction planning are being researched using augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR). The main goal is to create new incentives to motivate citizens to participate and to reduce the possible conflict in construction projects. With the help of the application developed within Take Part, citizens can discuss construction projects, give feedback or vote on them, and at the same time have the object of participation vividly presented in AR and VR. Furthermore, initiators can configure the participation ecosystem to find combinable applications for participation in the respective construction project and purchase suitable services, such as 3D modeling. This paper will present the concrete technological developments (incl. outdoor AR tracking and spatially anchored discussions), as well as the participation ecosystem (service development and implementation platform). For the first time, the developed prototype will be presented in detail. The challenge of developing an e‑participation app that offers the chance to integrate the interaction concepts of different technologies and at the same time provides a compelling user experience will also be described. Finally, the potential of such a solution for digital participation in local government will be discussed, especially in regard of the increased power of imagination and motivation to participate for the user and additionally put into the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.