## 5 Examples of Crowdsourcing Applications in Spatial Planning  
The focus of this part is on some specific crowdsourcing applications concerning spatial planning and also on the tools adopted in each of them. The case studies below mainly focus on the issue of knowledge acquisition through the implementation of crowdsourcing techniques in spatial planning problems where the involvement of the crowd plays a crucial role in making plans and decisions. \"Strong plans accompanied by broad stakeholder involvement are needed if plans are to have a significant effect on the actions of local governments\" [17]. In the following cases, crowdsourcing is adopted for the collection and manipulation of spatial data, but also for the generation and analysis of spatial information. In the case of the \"Potenza project\" (Italy), a \"kit of e-participation with free web-ware tools\" was developed by the \"Laboratory of Urban and Territorial Systems\" (University of Basilicata), which combines social, sharing, mapping and decision tools. The aim of this project was the development of a participatory tool enabling the reaching of consensus among stakeholders on several proposed alternative solutions to a planning problem and the acquisition of valuable feedback from the crowd, by combining traditional and electronic approaches. Under this rationale, social network tools and the potentiality of web communities were exploited. Participants in such a process were the coordinators of the Urban Labs, citizens who participated in workshops and also citizens who were interested in the workshops [18]. Sharing tools like \"Box\" (an online file sharing tool), \"YouTube\" (a video sharing tool), \"Vimeo\" (a video sharing tool), \"Flickr\" (an online photo management and sharing tool) and \"Slideshare\" (an online presentations sharing tool) make the process more transparent and were adopted with the purpose of sharing information, like documents, images, slides and multimedia. Among the available mapping tools, Google Earth and Google Maps have been chosen for the scope of this application. By using Google Earth, users can create, represent and exchange spatial information. They can also depict GEO-SWOT analysis results, built during workshops, on Google Maps by creating mashups--\"citizens have created some mashups, linking information, photos and comments to a specific location\" [18]. Finally, decision tools have been incorporated to the \"kit\" in order to help users express their preferences through surveys or an electronic vote. Such an example is \"Google Docs\", which helps the design of a survey and the storage of collected data in a spreadsheet. At this point, it should be mentioned that such a kind of survey may also help the online evaluation of several projects. Some applications consider citizens' participation at the design stage of a platform through which a web community can be created. The tools needed for the design of web-based online communities, existing in virtual space, are a communication network and also software that defines the user interface. In this way, wireless network communities can be established at the neighborhood level, where citizens discuss several problems and promote solutions. An example of such a kind of neighborhood community is the eco-villages (eco-village Vancouver, Phinney eco-village Seattle), whose main interest is to strengthen the community's vitality around healthier lifestyles and ecological aspirations [14]. Another creative web community has been established in Isola (Milan), a collective action called \"Cantieri Isola\", where neighbors have the opportunity to share proposals and ideas, acquire and exchange knowledge, anticipate and manage changes in their neighborhood and also attract a diversity of people and services in the neighborhood [14]. The main purpose of the Isola community--\"Cantieri Isola\" action--is to compensate for the absence of an institutional organization at the neighborhood level by adopting and exploiting the idea of neighborhood networking [14].