Spaces, places and possibilities

Rob Newell and Ian Picketts received a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada grant to research communicating land-use planning and infrastructure decisions through visualization.

Spaces, Places and Possibilities is an research project based in Squamish, BC. It explores ways of combining urban systems modelling with visualization techniques to better capture and convey potential outcomes of land-use planning and infrastructure decisions to local government and stakeholders. The modelling aspect of this research involves examining different community scenarios and the possible outcomes of implementing certain community plans, policies and/or programs and taking a particular development path. The scenario exploration is guided by an integrated systems model, which recognizes relationships among different social, economic, and environmental factors within a community. The model's output is then used to build interactive, realistic visualizations that users can navigate and experience from the first-person perspective in order to give them an impression what scenarios would look and 'feel' like if implemented in their community. The main objective of the research is to investigate challenges and opportunities around using urban systems models as a basis for building visualizations that can effectively engage and clearly communicate to users the benefits and trade-offs of different development paths.
The project involves three phases: (1) designing a community systems model and defining community development scenarios (complete), (2) using the systems model to calculate/estimate possible social, economic, and environmental outcomes of the scenarios, and (3) creating tools for communicating outcomes of scenario modelling (the focus of this proposal). The first phase used a participatory approach to design the systems model and community scenarios. The researchers engaged with local government and stakeholders to better understand local planning challenges, values and aspirations for the community in order to create a model and scenarios that are both relevant and useful to the community.
The second phase began in May 2018, and it applied the systems model to explore the community development scenarios. The modelling explored factors such as access to amenities and education, walkability, food systems, transit, housing affordability, critical habitat, etc. In October 2018, the researchers presented the scenario modelling outcomes to local government and stakeholders, who provided feedback on the work. The feedback was used to refine the model and scenarios in order to improve the relevance and usefulness of the work to the community.
The third phase developed tools for communicating outcomes of scenario modelling to diverse audiences, namely an interactive interface for the model outcomes and immerse visualizations. The model interface is online, and users are able to explore the scenarios, maps and respective modelling outcomes. The visualizations allows users to walk through and experience the community scenarios from the first-person perspective, and it was developed with a high degree of realism and a soundscape. The visualizations featured two neighbourhoods identified through previous discussions with local government and community members as places that would be particularly changed by the development scenarios. Local government and stakeholders met to interact with the model interface and visualizations, discuss the scenarios, and comment on the effectiveness of the communication tools. Based on these discussions, the tools were refined, and the final versions were presented to the public in an open house event. The results of this work can enhance the community's understanding of the social, economic, and environmental implications of developing Squamish in a certain way.