Let's Use VR! A Focus Group Study on Challenges and Opportunities for Citizen Participation in Traffic Planning.

Processes in urban planning are predominantly based on laws and regulations rather than user experience, potentially leading to low acceptance and usage of completed infrastructure projects. An evaluation of the completed project is usually not within the project’s scope, making it difficult to identify and address any issues in the process or design of completed measures – and hence device learnings for future projects. In this paper, we describe the current shift in local urban planners’ objectives and processes to be able to include citizens into the planning process and evaluate the results of infrastructure projects to learn for future endeavors. To foster a deeper understanding for their work we conducted a structured workshop with urban planners ( N = 7) with a focus on facilitation of citizen engagement and evaluation of infrastructure measures. Using the specific scenario of a cycling infrastructure project, we identified challenges, opportunities and requirements to support the planning process using digital tools and evaluated a virtual reality (VR) application as a potential digital support method. Our results indicate that urban planners are eager to increase citizen participation, but are limited by regulations and resources. They see digital tools as a way to increase engagement and present planning content in a more accessible manner.