De la gouvernance à la géogouvernance : de nouveaux outils pour une démocratie LOCALE renouvelée

Abstract

In a geographic context, governance as the social side of sustainable development presupposes the systematic organization of a public debate that involves the citizens in the decisions and projects regarding the territory and its environment. Whatever the chosen scale, it is from then on central to clarify the complexity of the goals and processes that take action in the matter of spatial organization.Opportunities are given by the new digital tools (ie Geographic Information Systems, Public Web) to renew the processes of transmission and of sharing of information and territorial knowledge. By doing so, these tools allow a mere governance to evolve into a real geo-governance setting the aware citizen at the heart of the decision-making. The current study is grounded on cases from Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur’s territorial collectivities for the Geographic Information Systems or from the Rhône-Alpes urban hierarchy for the public Web. After a definition and an introduction to the geo-governance concept, this article will set a critical analysis of the actual transfer of territorial information towards the citizens and its contribution to participatory democracy.

Keywords

• geo-governance
• geographic information
• Geographic Information Systems
• public web
• spatial issues
• participatory democracy