Spaces, places and possibilities

Royal Roads' Rob Newell received a Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 to study the impacts of community development and infrastructure changes on individuals and communities.

Rob Newell has a passion for understanding how we develop and use the places we call home and what this means for the local residents and environment. Too often, community changes are made without considering the experience of those who will live with the changes. Right now, the technology to help urban planners and members of the community examine change is on the market, but it can be difficult to access, use, and understand.

To help communities engage with change, Rob set out to explore how integrated systems modelling techniques can be complemented with visualizations so that people from all walks of life can gain a clear and comprehensive understanding of multiples changes that could occur when their communities are changed through developments, infrastructure enhancements, or zoning changes.

Newell aims to find better ways of engaging people who would be affected by changes in their community, and provide information about the changes, as well as open pathways to dialogue and feedback on proposed social and physical infrastructure development.

Rob’s dream is to help communities render their plans into comprehensive models that are easy to use, easy to understand, and really do express the look and feel of the changes being considered for the community so that members of the community can have a clearer understanding of and deeper engagement with infrastructure changes in their community.