Antje Kunze

Visualization and Decision Support Tools in Urban Planning

Cities are rapidly growing. There is an assumption that 90% of global population growth will be in cities between now and 2030. Therefore, infrastructures and the environment have to be adapted to the changing demands. Moreover, new urban development strategies have to be elaborated. In 2007, the first international Visualization Summit of more than 100 international researchers and practitioners stated a jointly developed research goal for the year 2010, namely ’Visualizing Future Cities’. Therefore in this chapter we provide an overview about visualization methods, decision support tools in architecture, urban and regional planning, stakeholder participation and collaborative environments. Also, new decision support tools for the visualization of future cities will be introduced.

Design of urban space at pedestrian scale: A method for parameterization of urban qualities

This paper focuses on a method for parameterization of urban space at the pedestrian scale. There is a growing demand for new design approaches that would help to slow down urban sprawls, move away from modernist urban planning models and improve the quality of urban centers overall [15]. One important aspect that contributes to the overall sustainability of contemporary cities is the quality of pedestrian space. To enhance urban environment at pedestrian scale new design strategies must be investigated. Contemporary urban centers must provide various options for public transport, contain fine-grained urban functions, mixed-use building types and good-quality public open spaces to facilitate their use by pedestrians. The aim of this paper is (a) to identify the initial set of design parameters of urban form at the pedestrian scale and (b) to demonstrate the exemplary implementation of these parameters within parametric software, e.g. Grasshopper for Rhinoceros [26] and Esri CityEngine [25] for analysis, optimization and evaluation of urban settings.

ETH Future Cities Simulation Platform

How can architects and urban planners design sustainable future cities? Are urban designers really designing urban systems? And which new computer-based techniques have changed the way they think, plan, and communicate? In this article we will investigate how design thinking can contribute to the planning of sustainable future cities. We will emphasize the benefits of using computer-based techniques for purposes such as analysis, simulation, and visualization of complex urban systems. We will introduce a theoretical framework (Future City Simulation Platform), a new hardware infrastructure (ETH Value Lab) for collaborative design, and novel software-based approaches for typical design tasks, such as the simulation and visualization of scenarios or the collaborative decision-making processes among stakeholders with different backgrounds.