Role of social media in the development of land use and building projects

A new social applications era is reforming the way people communicate nowadays. These technologies generate a network effect in turning passive content consumers into active content producers. Land use planning and building projects commonly operate between public and private domains, but the urban data is currently fragmented over multiple industry systems, such as BIM and GIS based technologies. This paper draws from a literature survey and adopts new ways of collaboration into the case study context of "Finnoo-Kaitaa" in Espoo, Finland. The municipality decided to work collaboratively while engaging citizens in developing the city district vision. Through this case study we consider qualitatively social media in enabling increased citizen participation. Conclusively, implications of social relevance in every-day work life are demonstrated through a future knowledge worker scenario. The forthcoming years will reveal whether the industry is ready for a strategic change towards transparent larger audiences with new business communication landscape.