Enhancing participation: Experiences of participatory geographic information systems in Shanxi province, China

The concept of participation is not intrinsic to the nature of Chinese planning systems; institutionally, they are centralized and top-down and lack local effective participation and communication between all actors. In recent years, participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) approaches have been used in natural resource planning and management. The paper discusses a concrete adoption of the methodology of PGIS into Participatory land use planning (PLUP) in the rural Shanxi province of China. A PGIS operational framework for PLUP is generalized from the project practice.