There is a widely shared view that planning actors require planning support systems (PSS) that can be easily adapted to changing project demands packaged in easy-to-understand formats. Recent studies confirm this and show that PSS are increasingly user-friendly. Still, little is known about under what conditions they add value in practice. This paper tests three hypotheses about PSS performance and usability in an experimental study. 133 students were exposed to different conditions of PSS facilitation flexibility and visualization hardware (tablets versus maptable). They performed identical strategy-making tasks consisting of divergence and convergence. In addition to measuring the quantity and quality of ideas, we assessed perceived process quality and usability of the PSS. Tablet groups performed better on idea generation and evaluated their solution to the planning problem more positively. In contrast, maptable groups performed better on ideational quality and evaluated their experiences in terms of collaboration, more positively. Groups under indicator flexibility performed best in idea generation, while groups under no flexibility received the highest score for ideational quality. Process quality scores were highest under no flexibility followed by indicator only flexibility. Findings suggest tablet use may be more effective for idea generation, an outcome of divergence, while maptables better support group communication, a key aspect of convergence. The study confirms the need for tools and methods that fit both individual and group work. Findings also indicate that identifying structured ways of applying adaptive PSS to the complex world of planning practice may be key to contextualizing such tools.

Accessibility concepts are increasingly acknowledged as fundamental to understand cities and urban regions. Accordingly, accessibility instruments have been recognised as valuable support tools for land-use and transport planning. However, despite the relatively large number of instruments available in the literature, they are not widely used in planning practice. This paper aims to explore why accessibility instruments are not widely used in planning practice. To this end we focus our research on perceived user-friendliness and usefulness of accessibility instruments. First, we surveyed a number of instrument developers, providing an overview on the characteristics of accessibility instruments available and on developers’ perceptions of their user-friendliness in planning practice. Second, we brought together developers and planning practitioners in a number of local workshops across Europe and Australia, where participants were asked to use insights provided by accessibility instruments for the development of planning strategies. We found that most practitioners are convinced of the usefulness of accessibility instruments in planning practice, as they generate new and relevant insights for planners. Findings suggest that not only user-friendliness problems, but mainly organizational barriers and lack of institutionalization of accessibility instruments, are the main causes of the implementation gap. Thus user-friendliness improvement may provide limited contributions to the successful implementation of accessibility concepts in planning practice. In fact, there seems to be more to gain from active and continued engagement of instrument developers with planning practitioners and from the institutionalization of accessibility planning.

Recent research has emphasized the importance of workshops as a venue where planning support systems (PSS) are used in planning processes. Empirical studies of these workshops have previously largely overlooked facilitation, in particular the role of a moderator (steering the discussion) and/or a chauffeur (steering the PSS). Drawing on existing facilitation research, we identify four main categories of facilitation interventions: substantive, procedural, relational, and tool-related. We use these categories to develop a novel conceptual framework for facilitation at PSS workshops. We test and develop this framework through semi-structured interviews with eight experienced facilitators of PSS workshops in the US and the Netherlands. The interviews confirm the validity of the intervention categories, but also revealed a wider range of PSS-specific workshop outcomes. We conclude that successful facilitation of PSS workshops requires two different types of facilitation interventions: some to encourage PSS use, and others to prevent PSS domination of the group discussion. Facilitating PSS workshops is mainly about finding the delicate and context-dependent balance between these two extremes.

This paper acknowledges the great potential of Geodesign. It notes, however, that barriers exist for urban designers to use GIS-based tools. An experiment we conducted with students and interviews with practitioners seem to confirm this claim. We identify four main barriers for the usage of GIS-based tools by urban designers: (1) impotence to handle unquantifiable issues, (2) (perceived) restriction of creativity, (3) limited possibility for fuzziness, and (4) existing habits need to be changed. Based on the interviews, we provide tentative solutions to overcome these barriers. The paper concludes by pointing out future research directions, in particular into a holistic user perspective of GIS-based tools in combination with Geodesign.