Jan Halatsch

Procedural Generation of Parcels in Urban Modeling

We present a method for interactive procedural generation of parcels within the urban modeling pipeline. Our approach performs a partitioning of the interior of city blocks using user‐specified subdivision attributes and style parameters. Moreover, our method is both robust and persistent in the sense of being able to map individual parcels from before an edit operation to after an edit operation – this enables transferring most, if not all, customizations despite small to large‐scale interactive editing operations. The guidelines guarantee that the resulting subdivisions are functionally and geometrically plausible for subsequent building modeling and construction. Our results include visual and statistical comparisons that demonstrate how the parcel configurations created by our method can closely resemble those found in real‐world cities of a large variety of styles. By directly addressing the block subdivision problem, we intend to increase the editability and realism of the urban modeling pipeline and to become a standard in parcel generation for future urban modeling methods.

Digital Urban Modeling and Simulation

In the global context, the population of cities and urbanized areas has developed from a minority to become the majority. Now cities are the largest, most complex and most dynamic man-made systems. They are vibrant centres of cultural life and engines that drive local and global economies. Yet, contemporary urbanized areas are environmentally, socially and economically unsustainable entities laying increasing pressure on the surrounding rural areas. Traditional methods of planning and managing large cities that lead to this situation have reached their limits. The planning and design processes therefore need a radical re-thinking. On the computational side, this necessitates the integration of new methods and instruments. On the planning and design side, this requires the involvement of stakeholders and decision makers much earlier than normally done in the past. The combination of interactive design and computation will demonstrate the effects and side effects of urban-rural planning or re-development. We build our design research approach on dynamics and scale: viewing cities and settlements as entities with dynamic urban metabolisms, we propose to apply stocks and flows simulations to the building scale (small, S-Scale), to the urban scale (medium, M-Scale), and to the territorial scale (large, L-Scale). Our long-term goal is the sustainable urban-rural system. Planning and implementation examples from Switzerland and ETH Zurich Science City serve as test cases, with the intent to use the findings for developments in other parts of the world.

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.