Digital city models in urban design

Abstract

This paper describes a virtual city model of Tokyo Yaesu area that is created by a model study undertaken for the Urban Renaissance Project promoted by the Japanese government. The model is generated using the technique of fabricating a physical urban model developed by the author’s group. The virtual model facilitates the navigation, simulation and visualization of the urban landscape and even the invisible environmental issues. However, the traditional physical model is still an effective tool for understanding the urban forms and scale in the practical design process. Consequently, we decided to build a physical model to start a dialogue with the stakeholders in this area. A notable feature of this study is that the data prepared for the physical model can be used in the development of the virtual model. We discuss data sharing and the cost-reduction issues for multiple types of models. It is confirmed that spatial data for use in urban design can be converted into Google Earth data and that virtual city models have potential to provide the powerful functions for sharing images of urban environments.