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Good practice Imported

GeoCitizen — Participatory GIS Land-Use Planning for Quito's Ilaló Mountain

Ecuador · Quito · See the Ecuador profile · See the Quito profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 10% 86/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Quito's planning authority and an Austrian/Ecuadorian/CIAT research team used the GeoCitizen participatory-GIS platform to run a 2013 land-zoning process on Ilaló Mountain with 5 neighbourhoods, 7 communities and 3 parishes, producing a legally submitted land-use plan.

15 hectares
Reforestation launched on Ilaló Mountain in 2013 (2013)
5 neighbourhoods, 7 communities, 3 parishes
Communities engaged in the participatory zoning process (2013)

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
GeoCitizen platform — University of Salzburg (Z_GIS), Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) & CIAT, with Quito's Metropolitan District Council of Territory, Habitat and Housing
Period
2013–2014 pilot (platform reused in later projects)
Keywords
participatory GIS, civic data, spatial planning, land use, community mapping

Context

Ilaló, a mountain within Quito's Metropolitan District in Ecuador (a district of 4,235 km² and 2.3 million residents), was declared a protected area in 1988 but had no enforceable land-use plan. In July 2013, Quito's Council of Territory, Habitat and Housing launched a participatory land-zoning process to fill that gap.

Objectives

The process aimed to translate residents' own knowledge of the mountain into a legally adoptable land-use plan spanning six predetermined zones: protection, natural-vegetation recovery, sustainable residences, agroforestry, tourism and services.

Activities

The GeoCitizen geo-web platform (combining Google Maps/ArcGIS mapping with citizen reporting and discussion), developed by the University of Salzburg's Department of Geoinformatics (Z_GIS), CIAT and Universidad San Francisco de Quito, was used by four geographically organised working teams to run kick-off and town-hall meetings across 5 neighbourhoods, 7 communities (comunas) and 3 suburban parishes, digitising residents' paper-map proposals into a shared GIS dataset.

Results

The process concluded in September 2013 with a final land-use plan handed to Quito's authorities for legal adoption. Early community-led work — including reforestation of 15 hectares on Ilaló and wildfire-risk identification — began the same year. The approach was later reused in separate GeoCitizen deployments, including a project in Quito Sur and an HCI evaluation in Cali, Colombia, though each is a distinct, smaller follow-on project.

Conclusions

The case shows participatory GIS can produce a legally submitted land-use plan across a multi-community area, though the evidence is descriptive rather than a controlled evaluation of policy impact.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Short (< 1 year)
Staffing & skills
Four geographically organised working teams running kick-off and town-hall meetings, University research team from Z_GIS (Salzburg), CIAT and USFQ providing platform development and facilitation, Quito's Council of Territory, Habitat and Housing as the municipal counterpart

Conditions for success

  • Access to an existing geo-web platform (GeoCitizen) combining professional GIS with citizen-friendly mapping
  • International university partnership providing technical and research capacity
  • Willingness of multiple community tiers (neighbourhoods, comunas, parishes) to participate in mapping their own land-use proposals

Commonly funded by

Horizon Europe National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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