Tech trends:

Beyond SimCity: City planning software you can try

by Rebekah Bovenmyer

If you like playing SimCity, you may want to try out some of these programs to see what city planners use to design the world around you.

Some software programs help the teams make decisions about what to do. Others help them show their plans to the public.

Here are two software programs city planners use that you can download to get a head start. (First be sure it’s okay to download and install large programs on the computer you’re using.)

Google Earth™ mapping service

Google Earth is a program that shows you satellite images taken all over the world. Once you download this program you can see places you’ve never been before or even what your house looks like from above! The images have been taken within the last three years.

The first thing you see when you open the program is the whole world on your screen, like you’re seeing it from outer space. Then, when you type in an address, the image gets closer and closer, then a little blurry, while it’s moving to the place you want to see. Finally, the image clears up and you can see the town or building from above, like you’re hovering above in a helicopter. You can zoom in, but sometimes the images might not be clear close up for smaller towns. You can also choose to see the street names and places to visit.

Some buildings, like those in New York City, are shown as 3D models from SketchUp, another program described below. Instead of looking at the image like you’re in an airplane, you can change the direction so you can see it like a bird flying around the buildings. The 3D buildings pop off the map.

“This program is great for general knowledge. It can help orient people to where a new highway or project is going to be built. I use it a lot before I travel,” says Dave Plazak, the associate director for policy with ISU’s Center for Transportation Research and Education.

For more information, visit http://earth.google.com/earth.html. Take a tour at http://earth.google.com/tour/index.html.

Google SketchUp

You can create 3D drawings in this software program. Planners and designers use SketchUp to help people see what a project would look like once it’s done and get them excited about it.

They can put digital pictures of the landscape over the drawing to give it that extra realistic touch.

Download SketchUp to your computer at http://sketchup.google.com/download.html or take a look at a gallery of middle and high school students’ models at http://www.sketchup.com/?id=20&gcid=12.

These next two are more technical programs that you may want to check out but that you won’t be able to download.

ArcGIS

ArcGIS is primarily used to make planning decisions. It compiles and maps out all kinds of things about a highway or building project. (GIS stands for “geographic information system.”) Planners can put in information about parks or wetlands nearby, city lines, and other types of information like the kinds of soil or how hilly the ground is in the area. They usually get this information from places like departments of natural resources or transportation.

Seeing the big picture helps planners and engineers decide what’s possible because you can’t build a highway through a park, and soil that needs a lot of stabilizing might make certain projects too expensive.

For more information, visit http://www.esri.com/. See demos at www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcview/demos.html.

CommunityViz

CommunityViz is an extension to ArcGIS that adds 3D modeling and other applications to help make sense of all the data stored in ArcGIS. It’s a combination of both planning and visualizing software. It lets users play “what if.” What if we did this instead of this?

CommunityViz makes it easy to get lots of people involved in the planning process. If they’re planning to build houses where there aren’t any, people can see what happens to the land and transportation needs if they build condos instead. Or if they build houses, how many kids will that attract? Will they need to build a school?

If some people don’t like the original plans, CommunityViz shows what would happen if they used the land differently.

For more information, visit http://communityviz.org/. See examples at http://communityviz.org/index.asp?circuit=4&fuse=exp.