Effective urban planning is about more than redesigning cities and towns. At its core, it’s about local democracy —the idea that the people who use a space—and whose taxes go towards its development—should have a stake in it.
Public participation is widely regarded as critical for ethical—and successful—urban planning. When residents are given an insight into the development process, the community takes better care of the area, demonstrates greater goodwill towards the project, and enjoys a higher level of user satisfaction once it’s completed. Because of this, the way proposed infrastructure works are communicated is incredibly important.
Previously, local authorities might have relied solely on pencil-drawn sketches or miniature models to explain their plans. Now, interactive 3D tools enable them to provide compelling animations to go alongside static renders. These real-time visualizations provide a much more accurate sense of how the development will change the area.
Weltzer has been using Twinmotion for around a year. For him, the software is a natural choice for urban planning projects. “It’s a brilliant tool for communication—it enables clients and the public to understand the project much more easily than old-school tools,” he says. “You can present something in 3D, with dynamic vehicles and vegetation, and with realistic lighting and shadows. You can even take the point of view of a pedestrian to imagine what the project will look like once it’s built.”
With all the data in Twinmotion, Egis was able to leverage the tool’s comprehensive feature set to add life to the visualization. Populating it with realistic elements such as people and traffic provided a real sense of how travelling along the bus-tram route would feel. “Twinmotion was extremely useful for creating the dynamic vehicle paths that we can see on the video,” says Weltzer. “Moreover, the beautiful and dynamic vegetation was easy to create with the paintbrush.”