Information Technologies That Change Relationships between Low-Income Communities and the Public and NonProfit Agencies That Serve Them

What are the prospective benefits for service providers and service recipients of decentralized access to 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.