CityScopeAR: Urban Design and Crowdsourced Engagement Platform

Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021

Most participation processes in urban planning offer poor incentives, especially for young citizens, hence important citizen's needs are excluded. Our work aims at identifying the degree to which Augmented Reality (AR) might motivate young people. We developed an AR-app with Unity3D to create new interaction concepts for use cases in urban planning. Building projects and environment changes are visualized, so citizens can contribute design ideas to the process. Using a human-centered design approach, we invited different stakeholders to participate. We conducted 40 interviews and a survey, then interaction concepts were evolved by citizens in four participatory design workshops. Our findings show that AR can motivate increased participation in urban planning. We also demonstrate a new approach to engaging low-tech users in designing high-tech solutions such as AR systems by using haptic 3D-tools like Lego or clay. Furthermore, we propose ways in which AR could be used collaboratively and embedded in existing participation processes.

Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2025

The integration of physical models with real-time digital evaluation and feedback enhances urban planning and design. City-Pixel operates by using 3D-printed pixels equipped with RFID tags and Arduino microcontrollers to represent urban elements. These pixels are placed on a grid mat, allowing real-time capture of their positions. The system then processes this data through software to perform various urban analyses. This novel method integrates physical representations of the built environment with sophisticated digital technology, enabling data-informed decision-making and improving collaboration among stakeholders. This paper examines City-Pixel, an innovative method that seamlessly integrates physical and digital components in architectural and urban design. The aim is to assess the tool's potential benefits, limitations, and transformative capacity to alter conventional design processes through instantaneous analysis and feedback on an actual built environment. The study analyzes this innovative design method and its unique capability of seamlessly integrating hardware and software components, exploring a complex technological framework that facilitates seamless interaction between physical and digital aspects. Defined assessment criteria, encompassing usability, real-time responsiveness, and design flexibility, are established to evaluate the tool's efficacy. The study clarifies the software design of City-Pixel, revealing its foundational architecture, algorithms, and user interfaces. The physical representation of the new method is meticulously examined, encompassing its manufacturing process, utilizing materials, fabrication techniques, and assembly sequence. City-Pixel enables thorough geographical analysis by integrating current technology, hence improving informed decision-making and planning. Its ability to deliver real-time data and feedback improves stakeholder collaboration, bridging gaps and fostering sustainable, efficient urban development. The implementation of this new method has significant implications for architecture and urban design. City-Pixel introduces an innovative methodology in architectural and urban design by effectively integrating physical and digital domains. Its revolutionary methodology provides a comprehensive platform for real-time assessment of urban environments, promoting data-driven decision-making and collaborative design processes, so revolutionizing the future of urban planning and development.

The consequences of architectural planning and design decisions made in the early design phases are hard to foresee. While professionals are used to reading plans and understanding architectural models, most laypeople are not familiar with their abstractions. This can lead to misinterpretations and misunderstandings between the different participants in the design process, especially in complex building situations, and decisions can be made or rejected that can have far-reaching consequences for the remainder of the project. In this paper we describe the concept and prototypical implementation of a decision support system for the early design and discussion stages of urban design projects that aims address precisely this problem. The setup directly connects physical volumetric models and hand-drawn sketches with an interactive, mixed-reality visu-alization presented on a tablet or mobile phone, making it possible to see an interactive real-time view of an architectural design within the context of the actual site. In addition, the system is able to incorporate interactive simulations conducted on the model and presented in the AR-view. 1 Problem During the early design phases presentations and discussions between architects and clients usually involve sketches, paper and models. While designers are used to working intuitively with these tools, laypeople are not used to reading plans or scale models and find it difficult to relate these abstract representations to the real world. Many people, therefore, find it hard to assess the impact of design decisions at this stage for the later result. An alternative means of presentation is the use of perspective drawings and visualisa-tions that show how an architectural design will look in a real scenario or the actual con

2015

An increasingly urbanizing human population presents new challenges for urban planners and designers. While the applicability of urban design tools for simulation experts is constantly improving, urban development scenarios require the input of multiple stakeholders, each with different outlooks, expertise, requirements, and preconceptions, and good urban design requires communication and compromise as much as it requires effective use of tools. The best tools will facilitate this communication while remaining evidence-based, allowing diverse planning teams to develop high quality, healthy, sustainable urban proposals. Presented in this paper is a new such tool, implemented as a tangible user interface, that allows varied stakeholders to quickly collaborate on creation and exploration of new urban design solutions. The tool provides performance feedback for a neighborhood’s operational energy costs, daylight availability, and walkability. Fast interaction is attained through a novel...

Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management, 2015

The complexity of urban projects today requires new approaches to integrate stakeholders with different professional backgrounds. Traditional tools used in urban planning are designed for experts and offer little opportunity for participation and collaborative design. This paper introduces the concept of Geospatial Tangible User Interfaces (GTUI), and reports on the design and implementation of such a GTUI to support stakeholder participation in collaborative urban planning. The proposed system uses physical objects to interact with large digital maps and geospatial data projected onto a tabletop. It is implemented using a PostGIS database, a web map server, the computer vision framework reacTIVision, a Java based TUIO client, and GeoTools. Based on a series of comments collected during an evaluation workshop with stakeholders in the fields of urban and energy planning, we discuss how maps projected on a table and physical objects can be an new approach to participatory bottom-up urban planning.

Advances in Information Systems Development, 2019

Public Participation encounters great challenges in the domain of urban design concerning decision making and citizens' appropriation of a future place. Many tools and methods have been proposed to ease the participation process. In this paper we are targeting artefacts used in face-to-face workshops, in which citizens are asked to make design proposals for a public space. We claim that current state of the art can be improved (i) by better articulating digital artefacts with participatory processes and (ii) by providing interfaces that enhance citizen's spatial awareness and comprehension as well as collective creativity in urban design projects. We present the design and prototyping of an interactive virtual environment that follow the design-science research guidelines.

Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on …, 1999

We introduce a system for urban planning -called Urpthat integrates functions addressing a broad range of the field's concerns into a single, physically based workbench setting. The I/O Bulb infrastructure on which the application is based allows physical architectural models placed on an ordinary table surface to cast shadows accurate for arbitrary times of day; to throw reflections off glass facade surfaces; to affect a real-time and visually coincident simulation of pedestrian-level windflow; and so on. We then use comparisons among Urp and several earlier I/O Bulb applications as the basis for an understanding of luminous-tangible interactions, which result whenever an interface distributes meaning and functionality between physical objects and visual information projectively coupled to those objects. Finally, we briefly discuss two issues common to all such systems, offering them as informal thought-tools for the design and analysis of luminous-tangible interfaces.

2005

Abstract. We report a study using ARTHUR, an augmented reality system in which simulated pedestrians (agents) interact with design proposals during architectural design and urban planning. We looked at the effects of the agents on how designers used the system. We found that the simulation encouraged complex integration of design and review which took the designers in unexpected directions. It also reduced the extent that participants 'envisioned'.

srlsim.tuwien.ac.at

This article is seen as a base for development of urban co-design interfaces like visual digital 3D city models to enhance public participation in local urban projects and to be also used as communication and collaborative tools in urban design.

2004

Projects in the area of architectural design and urban planning typically engage several architects as well as experts from other professions. While the design and review meetings thus often involve a large number of cooperating participants, the actual design is still done by the individuals in the time in between those meetings using desktop PCs and CAD applications. A real collaborative approach to architectural design and urban planning is often limited to early paper-based sketches. In order to overcome these limitations, we designed and realized the ARTHUR system, an Augmented Reality (AR) enhanced round table to support complex design and planning decisions for architects. While AR has been applied to this area earlier, our approach does not try to replace the use of CAD systems but rather integrates them seamlessly into the collaborative AR environment. The approach is enhanced by inDigital Peer Publishing Licence Any party may pass on this Work by electronic means and make ...