Jos P. van Leeuwen
Klaske Hermans
ABSTRACT
In urban planning, 3D modeling and virtual reality (VR) provide new means for involving citizens in the planning process. For municipal government, it is essential to know how effective these means are, to justify investments. In this study, we present a case of using VR in a municipal process of civic participation concerning the redesign of a public park. The process included co-design activities and involved citizens in decision-making through a ballot, using 3D-rendered versions of competing designs. In co-design, 3D-modeling tools were instrumental in empowering citizens to negotiate design decisions, to discuss the quality of designs with experts, and to collectively take decisions. This paper demonstrates that, in a ballot on competing designs with 1302 citizens, VR headsets proved to be equally effective compared to other display technologies in informing citizens during decision making. The results of an additional, controlled experiment indicate that VR headsets provide higher engagement and more vivid memories than viewing the designs on non-immersive displays.
By integrating research into a municipal process, we contribute evidence of cognitive and engagement effects of using 3D modeling and immersive VR technologies to empower citizens in participatory urban planning. The case described in the paper concerns a public park; a similar approach could be applied to the design of public installations including media architecture.
- Kheir Al-Kodmany. 1999. Using visualization techniques for enhancing public participation in planning and design: process, implementation, and evaluation. Landscape and Urban Planning 45, 1: 37--45.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Kheir Al-Kodmany. 2001. Visualization Tools and Methods for Participatory Planning and Design. Journal of Urban Technology 8, 2: 1--37.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Sherry R. Arnstein. 1969. A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Planning Association 35, 4: 216--224.Google Scholar
- Jakki Bailey, Jeremy N Bailenson, Andrea Stevenson Won, June Flora, and K Carrie Armel. 2012. Presence and Memory: Immersive Virtual Reality Effects on Cued Recall. Proceedings of the International Society for Presence Research Annual Conference: 24--26.Google Scholar
- J Ball, N Capanni, and S Watt. 2007. Virtual Reality for Mutual Understanding in Landscape Planning. International Journal of Social, Behavioral, Educational, Economic, Business and Industrial Engineering 1, 11: 661--671.Google Scholar
- Erling Björgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren. 2010. Participatory design and "democratizing innovation." In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference - PDC '10, 41--50. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Glenda Amayo Caldwell and Marcus Foth. 2014. DIY media architecture: Open and participatory approaches to community engagement. In Proceedings of the 2014 Media Architecture Biennale, 1--10. Google ScholarDigital Library
- J.L. Creighton. 2005. The public participation handbook: Making Better Decisions Through Citizen Involvement. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.Google Scholar
- Jens Dambruch and Michel Krämer. 2014. Leveraging public participation in urban planning with 3D web technology. Proceedings of the Nineteenth International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technologies - Web3D '14: 117--124. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Christopher A. le Dantec and Carl DiSalvo. 2013. Infrastructuring and the formation of publics in participatory design. Social Studies of Science 43, 2: 241--264.Google ScholarCross Ref
- H.Q. Dinh, N. Walker, L.F. Hodges, Chang Song, and A. Kobayashi. 1999. Evaluating the importance of multi-sensory input on memory and the sense of presence in virtual environments. In Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality 1999, IEEE, Houston, TX, 222--228. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marcus Foth, Martin Tomitsch, Laura Forlano, M. Hank Haeusler, and Christine Satchell. 2016. Citizens breaking out of filter bubbles. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays - PerDis '16, 140--147. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Marcus Foth. 2017. Participation, Co-Creation, and Public Space. The Journal of Public Space 2, 4: 21--36.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jesse Fox, Jeremy Bailenson, and Joseph Binney. 2009. Virtual experiences, physical behaviors: The effect of presence on imitation of an eating avatar. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 18, 4: 294--303. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Joel Fredericks, Glenda Amayo Caldwell, and Martin Tomitsch. 2016. Middle-out design: collaborative community engagement in urban HCI. In Proceedings of the 28th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction, 200--204. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Gemeenteraad Den Haag. 2012. Inspraak- en participatieverordening gemeente Den Haag 2012 (The Hague municipal bill on civic participation, in Dutch). Gemeente Den Haag.Google Scholar
- Lewis Gill and Eckart Lange. 2015. Getting virtual 3D landscapes out of the lab. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 54: 356--362.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Joel Harman, Ross Brown, and Daniel Johnson. 2017. Improved Memory Elicitation in Virtual Reality: New Experimental Results and Insights. In INTERACT 2017, Springer, 128--146.Google Scholar
- Pepijn van Houwelingen, Anita Boele, and Paul Dekker. 2014. Burgermacht op eigen kracht? Een brede verkenning van ontwikkelingen in burgerparticipatie (in Dutch). Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau, Den Haag.Google Scholar
- T.L.J. Howard and N. Gaborit. 2007. Using Virtual Environment Technology to Improve Public Participation in the Urban Planning Process. Journal of Urban Planning and Development 133, 4: 233--241.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Helena Karasti. 2014. Infrastructuring in participatory design. In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference - PDC '14, 141--150. Google ScholarDigital Library
- S. F. Kuliga, T. Thrash, R. C. Dalton, and C. Hölscher. 2015. Virtual reality as an empirical research tool - Exploring user experience in a real building and a corresponding virtual model. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 54: 363--375.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Antje Kunze, Jan Halatsch, Carlos Vanegas, Martina Maldaner Jacobi, Benamy Turkienicz, and Gerhard Schmitt. 2011. A Conceptual Participatory Design Framework for Urban Planning. In Proceedings of eCAADe 2011: Respecting Fragile Places, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 895--903.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Jos P. van Leeuwen, Klaske Hermans, Arnold Jan Quanjer, Antti Jylhä, and Hanke Nijman. 2018. Using Virtual Reality to Increase Civic Participation in Designing Public Spaces. In Proceedings of the European Conference on Digital Government 2018, Santiago de Compostela, Spain.Google Scholar
- Jos P. van Leeuwen and Harry J.P. Timmermans (eds.). 2006. Innovations in Design & Decision Support Systems in Architecture and Urban Planning. Springer, Dordrecht, NL. Google ScholarDigital Library
- James J.W. Lin, Henry B.L. Duh, Donald E. Parker, Habib Abi-Rached, and Thomas A. Furness. 2002. Effects of Field of View on Presence, Enjoyment, Memory, and Simulator Sickness in a Virtual Environment. In Proceedings IEEE Virtual Reality 2002(VR), IEEE, Orlando, FL, 164. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Luigi Maffei, Massimiliano Masullo, Aniello Pascale, Gennaro Ruggiero, and Virginia Puyana Romero. 2016. Immersive virtual reality in community planning: Acoustic and visual congruence of simulated vs real world. Sustainable Cities and Society 27: 338--345.Google ScholarCross Ref
- Nemanja Memarovic, Ivan Elhart, Andrea Michelotti, Elisa Rubegni, and Marc Langheinrich. 2013. Social Networked Displays: Integrating Networked Public Displays with Social Media. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing - UbiComp'13, Zurich, Switzerland, 55--58. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nemanja Memarovic, Marc Langheinrich, Florian Alt, Ivan Elhart, Simo Hosio, and Elisa Rubegni. 2012. Using public displays to stimulate passive engagement, active engagement, and discovery in public spaces. In Proceedings of the 4th Media Architecture Biennale Conference on Participation - MAB '12, Aarhus, Denmark, 55--64. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Nemanja Memarovic, Marc Langheinrich, and Ava Fatah gen. Schieck. 2014. Community is the Message - Viewing Networked Public Displays Through McLuhan's Lens of Figure and Ground. In Proceedings of the Media Architecture Biennale - MAB'14, Aarhus, Denmark, 30--33. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Timo Ojala, Vassilis Kostakos, Hannu Kukka, Tommi Heikkinen, Tomas Lindén, Marko Jurmu, Simo Hosio, Fabio Kruger, and Daniele Zanni. 2012. Multipurpose Interactive Public Displays in the Wild: Three Years Later. Computer: 42--49. Google ScholarDigital Library
- FF Reichheld. 2003. The one number you need to grow. Harvard business review 81, 12: 46--55.Google Scholar
- Mettina Veenstra, Niels Wouters, Marije Kanis, Stephan Brandenburg, Kevin te Raa, Bart Wigger, and Andrew Vande Moere. 2015. Should Public Displays be Interactive? Evaluating the Impact of Interactivity on Audience Engagement. In Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Pervasive Displays - PerDis '15, Saarbruecken, Germany, 15--21. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Leena Ventä-Olkkonen, Marianne Kinnula, Graham Dean, Tobias Stockinger, and Claudia Zuñiga. 2013. Who's There? Experience-Driven Design of Urban Interaction Using a Tangible User Interface. In Proceedings of the 12th Int'l Conf. on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia - MUM '13, Luleå, Sweden. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bauke de Vries, Jos van Leeuwen, and Henri Achten (eds.). 2001. Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures 2001. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, NL. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Martijn de Waal. 2014. The City as Interface. Nai010 Publishers, Rotterdam, NL.Google Scholar
- Martijn de Waal and Marloes Dignum. 2017. The citizen in the smart city. How the smart city could transform citizenship. Information Technology 59, 6: 263--273.Google Scholar
- Sarah Williams. 2016. Data Visualizations Break Down Knowledge Barriers in Public Engagement. In Civic Media: Technology, Design, Practice, Eric Gordon and Paul Mihailidis (eds.). The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 165--197.Google Scholar
- Ulrike Wissen Hayek. 2011. Which is the appropriate 3D visualization type for participatory landscape planning workshops? A portfolio of their effectiveness. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 38, 5: 921--939.Google Scholar
- Ulrike Wissen Hayek, Noemi Neuenschwander, and Adrienne Grêt-Regamey. 2012. Facilitating well-informed trade-off decision making on land use change: Integrating rules and indicators of ecosystem service provision into procedural 3D visualization. In 6th International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software - Leipzig, Germany, 2235--2242.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Effectiveness of Virtual Reality in Participatory Urban Planning: A Case Study
Recommendations
Citizen-Centered Design in Urban Planning: How Augmented Reality can be used in Citizen Participation Processes
DIS '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Designing Interactive Systems ConferenceMost participation processes in urban planning offer poor incentives, especially for young citizens, hence important citizen's needs are excluded. Our work aims at identifying the degree to which Augmented Reality (AR) might motivate young people. We ...
Information Visualisation, Gamification and Immersive Technologies in Participatory Planning
CHI EA '18: Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsPublic participation in the decision-making processes that shape the urban environments we inhabit is an imperative aspect of a democratic society. Recent developments in the fields of Information Visualization, Gamification and Immersive Technologies (...
An interactive and responsive virtual reality environment for participatory urban planning
SimAUD '20: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Symposium on Simulation for Architecture and Urban DesignUrban simulation using Virtual Reality can provide an interactive and responsive environment for participatory planning to evaluate alternative designs, regulations and environmental policies. The objectives therefore are that the virtual world is ...
Comments