TY - CHAP T1 - Insights of 3D Digital Cities: The Past, Present and Futures T2 - CAAD Talks Y1 - 2005 A1 - Mao-Lin Chiu A1 - Chengzhi Peng KW - Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) KW - Digital Cities KW - Digital City Models AB -

The recent developments of Computer-Aided Design (CAD), Geographic Information System (GIS), and Web-based technologies seem to have motivated the creation of 3D digital cities (3D cities in short) around the globe. The stories of why and how people created 3D cities, and what are their uses at present or in the future are increasingly being sought after by people in academia as well as in industry. This introductory chapter provides an overall review of the development of 3D cities. Its aim is to introduce readers some representative examples of 3D cities created recently by people working in the field, and in so doing, we hope to set up a general stage for playing out each specific story to be told by the following chapters.

Urban planners and architectural designers are highly interested in the urban formation and its development, including the density, building height, open spaces, and skylines. Therefore, physical models are used as a representation and communication tool for the policy makers and citizens, Figure 1, Shanghai model. In the mid-1980s, computer models of real cities were created by experimental uses of a few digital technologies. The widely available applications of computer and communication technologies such as CAD, computer graphics (CG), virtual reality (VR), photogrammetry, satellite images, web-based technologies, geographic information system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) have opened up opportunities for large-scale urban landscape visualization and urban information integration, Figure 2 (Chiu and Lan, 2001; Sasada, 1999; Day and Radford, 1998; Ligget and Jepson, 1995).

Currently, at least 60 digital cities are reported in the world, and it is found that these 3D cities were applied with various representations and technologies for different purposes (CASA 2004). Some well-known 3D cities such as Glasgow, Bath, Berlin, Helsinki, and Los Angels have been reported in many publications, and have since become exemplary models for other similar developments. On seeing these 3D cities, we are first shown alternative ways of visualizing city form, and we could also experience unusual interactive functions such as way-findings, navigation and virtual visits (Morozumi et al, 2000). However, some important issues have been asked in the creation of 3D digital cities, such as: What are the values of city models? Who are the users? How to utilize digital city models? How to receive feedbacks from its applications? Apparently, a 3D digital city has dimensions other then the technical and practical that are social, cultural, political, ideological, and of course also theoretical (Couclelis, 2004).

While many digital cities are known to exist, the definitions and visions of digital cities varied from a real city to a virtual information city (Mitchell, 1994; Ishida, 2000). A 3D digital city can be defined in this chapter as “a comprehensive, web-based representation, or reproduction, of multiple aspects or functions of a real city, accessible to all kinds of users”. The following content will provide a survey of existing digital cities that provide the foundation for further discussions.

JA - CAAD Talks T3 - CAAD Talks PB - Archidata Co., Ltd. CY - Taipei, Taiwan VL - 4 SP - 13-36 J1 - Architectural Computing ID - AZ-CF-96852 SN - 9570454652 ER -