Impact of utilizing 3D digital urban models on the design content of urban design plans in US cities

摘要

Some experts suggest that urban design plans in US cities may lack adequate coverage of theessential design aspects, particularly three-dimensional design aspects of the physicalenvironment. Digital urban models and information technology tools may help designersvisualize and interact with design alternatives, large urban data sets, and 3D information moreeffectively, thus correcting this problem. However, there is a limited understanding of theimpact that these models may have on the quality of the design product and consequentlyhesitation about the appropriate methods of their usage. These suggest a need for research intohow the usage of digital models can affect the extent with which urban design plans cover theessential design aspects. This research discusses the role digital models can play in supportingdesigners in addressing the essential design aspects. The research objective is to understand howthe usage of digital models affects the coverage of the essential design aspects. The researchapplies a novel perspective of examining both the methods of modeling-supported urban designand the design content of urban design to attempt to reveal a correlation or causal relation.Using the mixed method approach, this research includes three phases. The first, literaturereview, focused on reviewing secondary sources to construct theoretical propositions about theimpact of digital modeling on urban design against which empirical observations werecompared. Using qualitative content analysis, the second phase involved examining 14 plans toassess their design content and conducting structured interviews with the designers of fourselected plans. The third phase involved sending questionnaire forms to designers in theplanning departments and firms that developed the examined plans. The analysis results werecompared with the theoretical propositions and discussed to derive conclusions. The extent of design aspects coverage was found to be correlated with the usage of digitalmodeling. Computational plans appear to have achieved a higher level of design aspectscoverage and a better translation of design goals and objectives. In those plans, 3D urban-widedesign aspects were addressed more effectively than in conventional plans. The effective usageof the model's functions appears to improve the quality of the decision-making process throughincreasing designers' visualization and analytical capabilities, and providing a platform forcommunicating design ideas among and across design teams. The results helped suggest amethodological framework for the best practices of modeling usage to improve the designcontent.