Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Analyzing Civic Activity in the Field of Urban Improvement and Housing Maintenance Based on E-Participation Data: St. Petersburg Experience

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia (EGOSE 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1135))

Abstract

Electronic participation tools are becoming increasingly popular among citizens as a means of communication with the authorities. Residents actively use dedicated websites and mobile applications to send electronic appeals on problems of the urban environment. In some big cities, it can be hundreds of thousands and even millions of messages annually. Big data allows for the analysis of civic activity and subjective perception of the environment by residents.

In this paper, we studied the data of a popular Russian portal called Our St. Petersburg, which provides means for interaction between residents and organizations responsible for the elimination of environmental defects.

A distribution of user activity was built based on the number of messages sent by them, which made it possible to identify groups of the most active participants. We identified the preferences of “activists” and “ordinary residents” among the most popular categories of complaints. It was found that activists are more likely to pay attention to citywide problems (for example, urban environment violations on the streets), while the majority of users are more focused on the problems of housing and communal services related to their apartment and house.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Vidiasova, L., Mikhaylova, E.: The comparison of governmental and non-governmental e-participation tools functioning at a city-level in Russia. In: Chugunov, A.V., Bolgov, R., Kabanov, Y., Kampis, G., Wimmer, M. (eds.) DTGS 2016. CCIS, vol. 674, pp. 135–144. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49700-6_14

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  2. Choi, B.-Y., Al-Mansoori, M.K., Zaman, R., Albishri, A.A.: Understanding what residents ask cities: open data 311 call analysis and future directions. In: Proceedings of the Workshop Program of the 19th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, p. 10. ACM, New York (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3170521.3170531

  3. New-York City 311. The Official Website of the City of New York. https://www1.nyc.gov/311. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

  4. Moradi, R.: Smarter CRM from a Customer Service Perspective: A Process Evaluation on the City of San José’s My San Jose Smartphone Application for City Services. Master’s Projects. 591. San Jose State University (2018). https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.pb86-sed4

  5. Kontokosta, C., Hong, B., Korsberg, K.: Equity in 311 reporting: understanding socio-spatial differentials in the propensity to complain. In: Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange Conference, New York. arXiv:1710.02452 (2017)

  6. OneService Municipal Services Office. https://www.oneservice.sg/aboutus. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

  7. FixMyStreet Platform. mySociety Limited. https://fixmystreet.org/. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

  8. Bústia Ciutadana. https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/apps/ca/bustia-ciutadana. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

  9. “About the order of consideration of appeals of citizens of the Russian Federation”. http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&firstDoc=1&lastDoc=1&nd=102106413. Accessed 01 Jun 2019. (in Russian)

  10. “Beautiful Petersburg”. http://krasimir.org/about. Accessed 01 Jun 2019. (in Russian)

  11. Kudinov, S.: Using e-democracy mechanisms for civic initiatives for the improvement of the urban environment. In: Proceedings of the International Conference “Internet and Modern Society”, St. Petersburg, Russia, pp. 23–24 (2013). (in Russian)

    Google Scholar 

  12. The Portal “Our St. Petersburg”. http://gorod.gov.spb.ru/. Accessed 01 Jun 2019. (in Russian)

  13. Chugunov, A.V., Kabanov, Y., Misnikov, Y.: Citizens versus the government or citizens with the government: a tale of two e-participation portals in one city-a case study of St. Petersburg, Russia. In: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance, pp. 70–77. ACM (2017). https://doi.org/10.1145/3047273.3047276

  14. Our City Moscow. https://gorod.mos.ru/. Accessed 01 Jun 2019. (in Russian)

  15. Kandappu, T., Misra, A., Koh, D., Tandriansyah, R.D., Jaiman, N.: A feasibility study on crowdsourcing to monitor municipal resources in smart cities. In: Companion of the Web Conference 2018 on the Web Conference 2018, Lyon, pp. 919–925 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1145/3184558.3191519

  16. Chugunov, A., Rybalchenko, P.: Development of the system of electronic interaction between citizens and authorities in St. Petersburg: the experience of “Our Petersburg” portal, 2014–2018. Information resources of Russia, no 6, pp. 27–34 (2018). (in Russian)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kudinov, S., Ilina, E., Grekhneva, E.: Exploring the connection between the existence of local web communities and civic activity: St. Petersburg case study. In: Chugunov, A., Misnikov, Y., Roshchin, E., Trutnev, D. (eds.) EGOSE 2018. CCIS, vol. 947, pp. 334–347. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13283-5_25

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  18. Wang, L., Qian, C., Kats, P., Kontokosta, C., Sobolevsky, S.: Structure of 311 service requests as a signature of urban location. PLoS ONE 12(10), e0186314 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186314

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Zheng, Y., Capra, L., Wolfson, O., Yang, H.: Urban computing: concepts, methodologies, and applications. ACM Trans. Intell. Syst. Technol. 5(3), 1–55 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1145/2629592

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Pan, B., Zheng, Y., Wilkie, D., Shahabi, C.: Crowd sensing of traffic anomalies based on human mobility and social media. In: Proceedings of the 21th ACM SIGSPATIAL Conference on Advances in Geographical Information Systems, Orlando, Florida (2013). https://doi.org/10.1145/2525314.2525343

  21. Nenko, A., Koniukhov, A., Petrova, M.: Areas of habitation in the city: improving urban management based on check-in data and mental mapping. In: Chugunov, A., Misnikov, Y., Roshchin, E., Trutnev, D. (eds.) EGOSE 2018. CCIS, vol. 947, pp. 235–248. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13283-5_18

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  22. Castro, P.S., Zhang, D., Chen, C., Li, S., Pan, G.: From taxi GPS traces to social and community dynamics: a survey. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 46(2), 17 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1145/2543581.2543584

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Stratigea, A., Panagiotopoulou, M.: ‘Smart’ cities as a new paradigm for serving urban sustainability objectives – a view in the mediterranean experience. In: Korres, G., Kourliouros, G., Tsobanoglou, K.A. (eds.) Proceedings of International Conference on Socio-economic Sustainability, Regional Development and Spatial Planning: European and International Dimensions and Perspectives. International Sociological Association, pp. 213–220 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  24. Berntzen, L., Johannessen, M., Böhm, S., Weber, C., Morales, R.: Citizens as sensors human sensors as a smart city data source. In: SMART 2018: The Seventh International Conference on Smart Cities, Systems, Devices and Technologies (2018)

    Google Scholar 

  25. Hong, A., Kim, B., Widener, M.: Noise and the city: leveraging crowdsourced big data to examine the spatiotemporal relationship between urban development and noise annoyance. Environ. Planning B Urban Analytics City Sci. (2019). https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808318821112

  26. Solymosi, R.: Exploring spatial and temporal variation in perception of crime and place using crowdsourced data. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1541235/1/PhDThesis_PostCorrectionsFinal.pdf. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

  27. Minkoff, S.L.: NYC 311: a tract-level analysis of citizen-government contacting in New York City. Urban Aff. Rev. 52(2), 211–246 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087415577796

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Tableau Desktop Public Edition. https://public.tableau.com/s/. Accessed 01 Jun 2019

Download references

Acknowledgment

This research is financially supported by The Russian Science Foundation, Agreement №. 17-71-30029 with co-financing of Bank Saint Petersburg.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Design and Urban Studies, ITMO University, Birzhevaya Liniya 14, 199034, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Sergei Kudinov, Ekaterina Ilina & Aleksandr Antonov

Authors
  1. Sergei Kudinov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ekaterina Ilina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Aleksandr Antonov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sergei Kudinov .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Andrei Chugunov

  2. Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Igor Khodachek

  3. University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

    Yuri Misnikov

  4. ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Dmitrii Trutnev

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Kudinov, S., Ilina, E., Antonov, A. (2020). Analyzing Civic Activity in the Field of Urban Improvement and Housing Maintenance Based on E-Participation Data: St. Petersburg Experience. In: Chugunov, A., Khodachek, I., Misnikov, Y., Trutnev, D. (eds) Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia. EGOSE 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1135. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39296-3_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39296-3_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-39295-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-39296-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation