A tool that involves people in planning their living environment

City of Jyväskylä is the fifth largest urban area in Finland with 140,000 inhabitants. Jyväskylä is particularly interested in developing new participation methods for their residents considering land use planning and architectural decisions. Because of this, the city has been using Mapita’s map based online questionnaire tool Maptionnaire since 2015.

The partnership with Mapita began when Jyväskylä’s Department of Land Use Planning and Land Management got an offer for a free trial period of Maptionnaire. Online questionnaires had already been in consideration, so they decided to give it a go.

– Maptionnaire is designed for community participation and engagement. We use it to create a variety of different kind of questionnaires for our residents. We can for example present different plans or architecture competition results and ask what people think of them, Sarita Humppi, Specialist in Land Use Planning for the City of Jyväskylä tells.

Visuality encourages to participate

With Maptionnaire, Jyväskylä’s Deparment of Land Planning and Land Management get to acquire valuable local knowledge that would otherwise be hard to find. The software’s visuality is one of the key aspects in its compelling execution.

“It’s very easy to use and you don’t have to have GIS expertise. Anyone can analyze the data.”

– Pictures and visual maps are important in motivating people to respond to questionnaires. With Maptionnaire, it’s also not just about people providing us with information – we provide information for them as well, Humppi says.

– What helps a lot at being creative with Maptionnaire are the annual seminars Mapita arranges. You can get a lot of examples and experiences from other cities and developers in these events, she continues.

Results that anyone can analyze

Maptionnaire gives out ready-to-use Excel reports and Mapita offers online analysis tools to dig into the results. In Jyväskylä, the results are transferred to other GIS programs and then analyzed further.

– It’s very easy to use and you don’t have to have GIS expertise. Anyone can analyze the data.

Humppi says she is very pleased with how effortless cooperating with Mapita has been. Citizens of Jyväskylä have also been very interested in sharing their ideas about the upcoming projects.

– Maptionnaire has had an impact on our work and it’s often very interesting to see the results. One of the most important things is that the feedback from the respondents has been positive. They have liked the questionnaires and have found them very user-friendly, she finishes.