Public Funding for Vucity Limited

"VU.CITY has created the largest, most accurate and truly interactive digital city model, which provides a revolutionary tool for architects, developers, advisors and the public sector. VU.CITY saves time and money for anyone involved in planning or development and is directly leading to better decision making, with 18 of 33 London councils already using it. Using game engine technology, users can import their own 3D model into VU.CITY to immediately place their proposals in context and test their visual impact. VU.CITY is fast becoming the industry standard method of considering development plans. The presentation of proposals through VU.CITY will speed up and increase engagement in mandatory public consultations and is already helping councillors make better, more informed decisions in planning committee meetings. Colouring London (CL) is a web based Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) initiative, designed by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), UCL, and created in collaboration with Historic England. Approximately 12 categories of data are being crowdsourced including building age, use, type size, designation status and rebuild history. CL is providing the first ever public resource, and first port of call, for data on the characteristics of London's building stock. CL is currently limited to 2D maps. The proposed project will develop an API to feed CL data directly into VU.CITY to be visualised in 3D. The project also aims to create an app based version of VU.CITY to work on mobile phones (YOUR.VU.CITY). This will enable members of the public to view proposed developments from their current geographical location. The user will simply point their smart phone in the direction of the proposed development site and it will appear within the screen view. Users will be able to provide feedback on the proposed development through the app. Based on the feedback, developers will be able to revise their proposalst. Similarly, developers will be able to receive suggestions and feedback on mixed-use community development sites from potential end users. Our aim is to effect attitude changes around planning: * The public become a source of useful data, rather than an obstacle to development * Development transitions from a destructive force, thrusting unwanted and unsuitable buildings onto the public, to an accountable force for regeneration that communities buy into * Obligatory community spaces in new developments become genuine community assets * Planning ceases to be an expensive overhead for developers and adds value by enabling developments that truly meet their intended users' needs"

To develop a 3D interactive model which can instantaneously evaluate planning development proposals, identify problems and offer solutions in order to facilitate fast, effective, high-quality decision making by planners and other public sector authorities.

"Advances in IT have led recently to massive improvements in representing the real world in digital form. The technology exists to render buildings with photo realistic surfaces, and enable people to walk through virtual reality (VR) representations of specific streets, from somewhere else, using specialist headsets. The amount of information processing involved to develop data and images into a user friendly 3D rendering is huge, and beyond the scope of most companies who would like to use it. This means at the moment most 3D VR models of cities use far more basic visualisations. They don't have the capabilities for realistic details such as street furniture and doorways, or visual representations of what will happen with future developments, such as accurate representation of changes in traffic or pedestrian numbers. This hampers the true potential of VR as an industrial tool. In this project we will be developing an accessible, immersive VR representation of the City of London. This will include prediction modelling capabilities so changes in, for example, traffic flow due to building work, can be visualised, and also better graphics, so street furniture, building doorways etc can be seen. We will be making this model available both to the public and to paying commercial users, so they can use it to help predict how their developments and other activities will affect the wider city, in a contextual and user friendly way. This will help massively when deciding on planning and development issues within The City. This software will then be expanded to a wider area within London and to other urban areas where levels of accurate visual scrutiny are needed."