I agree with you in some of your concerns but you should think that in the past planners had to deal with a less amount of data and the scale of urban development for cities for example was limited to small or medium districts .On the other hand technology and new softwares like city engine and GIS  are very good tools helping planners to have a comprehensive and detailed view in the same project .

Also the social media now play a great role in enhancing public participation which we need to have good and satisfying urban plans 

Infact I have a research work about this point particularly .

If the public departments crowdsource the data on civic amenities (roads, electricity, water, transport), it enables the co-creation of policies in real time. Mobile based applications are increasingly making it possible. The planning process is thus becoming more efficient and transparent. I have done a case study on an app that allows citizens to give real time feedback on the civic amenities which is routed to relevant public department. Citizens can then rate the local elected officials as per the grievance redressal. This makes the whole process of urban planning and maintenance transparent and incentive-based. 

New technologies certainly influence the collection, analysis and diffusion of information, but as urban planning is first and foremost a political process in which knowledge often serves to legitimate decisions it is very well possible that digitalization will be used in a similar way to sustain certain interests and perspectives and to legitimize rather than to inform decisions.

Digitalization has an great impact on urban planning practitioners by "feeding" them with large amount of data. Diverse, large-scale, and frequently updated sets of data are available. In this context, the issue for urban planners is not to find data, but to select the most significant information (and leave aside those sets that can be considered as noise). To avoid being overwhelmed by too many details, urban planning organization must rely on data integration processes in order to get new significant information corresponding to their specific planning scales (regional, local, parcel, project ...).

Digitalization provides new flexible tools to support public consultation and citizens participation; for example, it is possible to simulate the impacts of a development project on the neighbourhood. Many research projects combine urban design practices with geographical information systems (GIS) learning opportunities and simulation possibilities.

At last, I do agree with a previous comment that digitalization "enables the co-creation of policies [and technical specifications] in real time". It also impacts the time-frame of planning, by making possible to monitor planning decision (and realignment) on a very short-term basis. Also, even though digital data and geospatial information are used to legitimize certain decisions rather than others, citizens are more and more informed, have access to same information as professional planners.

Yes, I conducted such research, including analyzing the Land Use technical specification. It shows that only the Netherlands has solved the key problem. The paper plan does not have to be the only document anymore. The digital zoning plan is just as accurate and is the equivalent of a paper plan. In other European countries, the paper plan is still a document. Standardization brings many benefits, but the most for those countries that have: 1) definition of the plan,2)planning dokument, 3) zoning plan, 4) land use classification (France, Germany, the Netherlands). The authors of the Land Use specifications were the representatives of these countries, and therefore the standards contained in this specification are the most consistent with their model of the zoning plan. Work to improve the HILUCS classification for other countries and integrated planning is ongoing. The idea is very good. The uniform classification of hilucs combines economic planning with spatial planning, but is most suitable for regional and sub-regional planning. In my opinion, the ideal model of integrated planning is in the Netherlands. A zone plan model was created containing three types of zonal plans at various planning levels (national, regional, local) and plan area, location decision area, all included in one IT spatial planning model. Long legal acts and regulations are not needed. The Act refers to the IT model. Everything is clear. A well-functioning development policy is very important for the country's development. The most important for standarization (HILUCS, HSRCL) are the 1: 5000 (optionally furthermore 1: 20 000, 1: 10 000) scale.

Thanks Beata for your comment - even if I have posted the question a year ago, I am still very interested in the topic. Have you published anything from the research you mention, e.g. regarding how the Netherlands worked it out?

Yes, I mentioned the Netherlands, but the article is in Polish: " Public access to the data on Land Use: needs and limitations".Abstract: The implementation process of the Directive 2007/2/EC INSPIRE for spatial data theme "Land Use" is difficult and complex. The paper identified the issues involved and presents the interpretation of the most important issues of technical guidelines, including: D2.8.III.4 Data Specification on Land Use - Draft Guidelines, which establishes two types of land use 1) The Existing land use (ELU), II – The Planned land use (PLU). In the literature, research more space was devoted to the planned land use. Laws in most countries, except the Netherlands, do not consider the electronic form of plans, as a legally binding document. As far as the elaboration step and the adoption step are concerned, the main Land Use requirement is related to the datasets that describe existing Land Use at present and in the past. The author points to the need to build a database of existing zoning using existing data resources.

kay words: geoinformation, data integration, land use.

I've been involved in a project run by the Future Cities Catapult which looked at this issue: https://futurecities.catapult.org.uk/project/future-of-planning-digital-transformation-roadmap/ Its worth having a look at some of the work done by FCC. In the UK there is an difference between strategic planning which relates to long term plans and what's called Development Control, the decisions about specific developments. These are often undertaken in isolation and don't make the necessary links to infrastructure planning or the provision of public services, i.e. schools, doctors and hospitals. Using digital methods is starting to make these links but its still very tricky.

We've found that the application of standards is necessary to facilitate this. However in the UK at the moment its more a case of getting plans and the data underpinning those plans into a machine readable format.

One of the issues we faces in taking a digital approach was indeed the loss of creativity in planning specifically around 'place making'. I've been working with a theatre group to take a different approach to involving communities in local plan making.Its been a great way to bridge the technical and creative sides of planning.

Lastly there is an e-planning conference in Lisbon later this year: https://sites.google.com/site/uep2018conference/ which may be of interest. Good luck with your research,. Paul

Thanks Beata Stelmach-Fita , would be nice if I could read Polish, seems very relevant. I recently published an article about the Danish situation, see here Article Emerging digital plan data – new research perspectives on pl...

In Denmark, the legally binding version is the pdf file saved in the public plan database, however, all plans are also digitzed as geodata (polygons) which everybody can look up in the portal and also download.

Thanks Paul Cowie for your comment - seems like a very interesting project, but I couldn't really find a specific report or similar about - could you guide me to one?

And thanks for the link to the conference, seems very relevant, but I am afraid I cant make it this year. You posted the link from last year, I found some info on this years conference here: https://www.regionalstudies.org/opportunities/cfp-4th-international-conference-on-urban-e-planning-university-of-lisbon-portugal/

Sorry about the link. There are a couple of reports about the project one about the role of standards in planning which I've attached and also this from teh team at Catapylt: https://futurecities.catapult.org.uk/2019/02/05/post-permission-planning/

Good question. However, look at digitisation and space-sharing as an emerging force. The two are intertwined and drive the fourth industrial revolution. Cf. Preprint Transport and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

A subproject of our Collaborative Research Centre on the "Re-Figuration of Spaces" is looking into that: "Digital Urban Planning: Planning Practices and Physical Arrangements" (https://sfb1265.de/en/subprojects/digital-urban-planning/).

You might follow the project manager Prof. Dr. Gabriela Christmann

Thanks Anna Juliane Heinrich for that interesting link, though I could not find any timeplan of the project - but I suppose it just started. I will certainly follow it.

Within the topic of digital plan data and its relation to planning practice, we just started a new ESPON project (https://www.espon.eu/digiplan) which will run until start of 2021 and include several European countries as cases.

Bill Hillier's studies and his theory of Space Syntax are an important example of digitalization application in urban design, in general, the projects and researches need to co-author with specialists in the field of mathematics to integrate with urban planning projects.

What is the difference between urban planning and urban design? my background is of Landscape Architecture (unfinished thesis), and this profession knits statistical information, from life science, physical geography, onto a spatial representation of natural occurring gradients, very much shown on digital information. To print out this information, being satellite imagery (digital) onto paper/mass model (not detailed), evaluating what is the most important character of this given data is crucial to take it to a design process which is tridimensional by nature, if the zoning process could be transformed in tridimensional data across scales, it could hint valuable information in the design stages in a city, or self transformation as of in AI technologies. What we ought to know more are the biological exchanges over the landscape, and yes locals know better what are the most relevant to them but not precisely for that specific landscape, only science can shed out that information, and decide what information is relevant at that picture in time.