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INFORMATION STRUCTURE IN SPATIAL
GOVERNANCE
URL: http://www.spatialgovernance.com/governance/gov-07.htm
© John S. Cook - Created on 22 August 2004
Last modified
19/07/06 16:56
Australian EST |
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1. PRINCIPAL MODULES IN SPATIAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE |
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Information Modules in Spatial
Governance
The principal information modules needed to provide spatial governance
are those pertaining to:
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authority - where some legal
personality has rights and obligations involving use of resources
within a designated geographical area or territory |
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planning - involving information
about inputs, outputs and the functioning of particular systems that allows
anticipation of future outcomes |
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monitoring - involving the
observing, recording, analysis and assessment of how particular
systems have functioned in the light of experience |
Simple Components - Complex Structures
A relatively small number of letters in an alphabet is sufficient to build words,
phrases and sentences of immense variety. This capacity - known as 'combinatorial explosion' - allows a relatively
small number of elements to combine in ways that produce inestimable
variety and complexity. Just as learning the alphabet and meanings of
words allows an immense variety of written descriptions, the modules as
shown in Figure 1 contain further sub-modules or elements of
information that can combine in ways that produce very large numbers of
potential systems of spatial governance. |
Figure 1 |
Inter-modular
Interactions
Interaction is necessary between the principal modules.
| Authority can involve rights and responsibilities
in respect of planning - and planning can have implications for the
kind of authority necessary to implement plans |
| Planning has implications for monitoring to
indicate whether planning is successful - and monitoring provides the
experience on which further planning can take place |
| Monitoring has implications for whether an
authority is performing satisfactorily - and an authority can instigate
changes in monitoring regimes as a test of its own performance |
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References:
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R.H. Bradbury, (1998)
'Sustainable development as a subversive issue'. UNESCO flagship
Nature & Resources (October 1998) -
in HTML |
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Google search -
combinatorial explosion - |
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2. AUTHORITY MODULES AND THEIR
ELEMENTS |
Elements of an Authority
Module
In the context of spatial governance, formalised authority requires a
description of the following elements:
| the person - the legal person or persons who have
authority to determine
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| rights and obligations - the rules under which
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| the spatial element - an area or territory in which
a person has authority or jurisdiction |
Transfer of Authority
If there is to be a long-term continuity of
authority in exercising particular rights and obligations, arrangements
are necessary to transfer authority before a person dies or to arrange
for succession after a person's death. The requirement for transfer and
succession occurs regularly in transferring rights in property.
Similarly, issues of succession occur in government and commerce though
periodic election of individuals as members of bodies politic and
corporate. Thus, transfer of authority is a continuing
information-intensive activity in long-term governance arrangements.
Enrolling and Controlling
Traditional societies relied on a transfer of information through the
spoken word and the retention of information within living human memory.
Inventions of writing and number systems; and development of knowledge
such as arithmetic, geometry and astronomy increased the capacity for
description and larger-scale spatiotemporal organisation. Some of the
earliest written records related to land records and taxation on land or
agricultural production.
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Rights and Obligations
The rights of a legal entity in relation to a
specified area depend on the social understandings that can be created
and implemented within a community. Moreover, different legal entities
can have rights within the same territorial limits. Thus, a particular
parcel of land may be subject to:
| rights to govern - shared between federal, state
and local governments |
| rights to possess and use real property - with
various interests shared between owners, lessees, mortgagees and the
like |
| residual rights belonging to indigenous people
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Similarly, private and public corporations and
government agencies may have rights under the terms of their separate
constitutions to carry out their activities at particular places or within particular
geographical territories.
Spatial Knowledge
People can obtain a spatial orientation within their physical
environments through their experiences. These experiences can
become committed to memory and do not require any written description of
places and locations. Verbal directions to places can become
complicated.
However, larger-scale organisation often
involves understandings about a place or location that involve places
where people may not have actually visited.
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References:
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3. PLANNING MODULES AND THEIR
ELEMENTS |
Planning Functions
Planning depends on imagination, purpose and design. At the outset, a
plan exists mainly in the imagination. It is essentially a work of
fiction and remains so unless it is implemented and becomes a reality.
Where planning envisages a replication of things that have been done
before, visualising the outcome may require no particular stretch of the
imagination. Where planning involves the construction of some physical
output, an indication of the expected outcome may be discernible through
engineering or architectural drawings or through computer-generated
graphical displays.
Where planning involves organisational change,
Purpose and Constraints
on Design
Purpose is a
consequence of some human motivation or desire to change the world in
some degree - for better or worse. Design involves working out how to
achieve some purpose within constraints of what is deemed possible. Most
planning occurs under three significant constraints:
| a technical constraint of what is deemed
scientifically or technically possible;
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| an economic constraint that imposes limits on
available resources
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| a political constraint that imposes limits on the
extent to which planning imagination the what is deemed possible in an economic sense; and
what is deemed possible in a political sense - as something socially
permissible and acceptable. |
Usually, people and other animals learn to anticipate
the future in some degree as in catching a ball or catching prey. The
Theoretical Foundations of Design
Shared Anticipations, Expectations or Predictions
| fairly informal and shared within a relatively
small community |
| understandings shared locally and globally through
institutions of science |
Planning, Modeling and Visualisation
involving 'the imagined
deemed possible'. The 'imagined' can include a variety of physical
things or a variety of institutional arrangements that impact on
individual and social satisfactions or social and economic life.
The processes leading from what is imagined to what
Things become possible by overcoming constraints on what could become a
possibility.
and . Essential features in planning include:
| attempting to achieve outcomes by design |
| forecasting or predicting that particular actions
will lead to particular outcomes |
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Essential features in planning include:
| attempting to achieve outcomes by design |
| forecasting or predicting that particular actions
will lead to particular outcomes |
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in n the context of spatial governance, design and
planning involve decision-making oriented towards the future. Social and
economic development often involves the design and construction of physical
infrastructure that has a physical location. However, the benefits
obtainable from this physical infrastructure depends on how people decide to
use it. This depends on a governance infrastructure it is used. How it is
used depends on how
decision-making oriented towards the future - design, planning and policy
formulation.
'the imagined deemed possible'. The 'imagined' can include
a variety of physical things or a variety of institutional arrangements that
impact on individual and social satisfactions or social and economic life.
In the context of spatial governance, planning includes a range of
cognitive tasks that require decision-makers to imagine what might be
possible in the future in trying to satisfy some human purpose.
Planning and Investment
Insofar as planning and its implementation involves decision-making in the
present with an expectation of future private or social benefits, it is
in the nature of an investment. This may involve both tangible or
intangible investment. A tangible investment might involve physical
infrastructure. An intangible investment might involve the advancement
of new knowledge or understandings, or the promotion of goodwill.
However, the benefits obtainable from investments depend on how they are
used; and this may depend in turn on institutions of governance that
influence human behaviour in this regard.
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References:
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G. L.
S. Shackle, Imagination and the nature of choice, (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1979) |
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MONITORING MODULES AND THEIR
ELEMENTS |
Learning through Experience
Animals and humans might be
inclined to behave in ways that have proved successful in the past and
refrain from behaviour that has led to pain or disadvantage. This
provides the basis for learning through experience; behaviour
modification and social conditioning. At the level of an individual, the
ability to learn by experience depends on cognitive capacities in
observing, comprehending, memorising and recalling particular
experiences. At the level of society, a collective learning by
experience depends on institutional factors.
Science is an institutionalised form of learning through experience.
aids to improve on observing power through measuring and
sensing equipment;
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Accountability Regimes
Official
Statistical Collections
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References:
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EFFECTS OF
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE |
| Technological change can overcome technical and economic
constraints |
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References:
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