Reconstructing Real Cities in Google Earth 97
An anonymous reader writes "NewScientistTech has an article up on the way 3D models of real cities are being uploaded into Google Earth to help town planners and architects envisage their designs. Researchers at the University of Arkansas have developed a method for rapidly mapping building, which they are using to reconstruct the rapidly-expanding town of Fayetteville. The researchers say tools like Google Earth and Sketchup could eventually help ordinary citizens get more involved in urban development."
ordinary citizens get more involved in urban dev?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ordinary citizens get more involved in urban de (Score:2)
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Re:ordinary citizens get more involved in urban de (Score:3, Interesting)
Most urban planners do get their wishes through the city planners/council, wether through political favors or just plain bribes. However, in our city, I do know of one person who is using SketchUp to design a massive upgrade to a main corridor _in_ our city. He was using this feature before it has received the press it's been getting as of late.
You misspelled "urban planners"... (Score:5, Funny)
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The people of Fort Worth were some of the last to know about this. Radio Shack, Pier One and Tarrant County College (among others) all had purchased land along a proposed waterfront before the study ever began.
All the planning for this took place behind closed doors in congressional offices and b
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Wealthy and powerful people's kids need jobs too, you know.
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Re:ordinary citizens get more involved in urban de (Score:2)
I beg to differ. I'm an architect, I probably sit on a DRC meeting at least once a month. Most staff level planners are required to approve proposed designs prior to commission approval. Google earth has become one of the most revalutionary tools to date. Allowing simple arial evaluations of sites without having to leave the office. Most City GIS systems include arial photography mostly used for code enforcement. But from an architects stand point this is very usefull when presenting issues such as verti
Forget "Google Earth"; we need "Slashdot Spell" (Score:3, Funny)
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we need to start an architects spelling/grammar improvement fund.
lastly i wouldnt say lack o
Re:ordinary citizens get more involved in urban de (Score:2)
I think the correct answer is that they won't care what they think. But they might care about what they can show them in a 3D or 2 dimensional model. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3d picture that you can "fly" through is at least worth a thousand and one words.
cool (Score:4, Funny)
That sounds like it would be good if you wanted to, say, judge building altitude and approach angle for flying a plan^^#$@%^^^^NOCARRIER
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I don't get it (Score:2, Funny)
In Arkansas? (Score:2)
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Maybe I am a Cynic... (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Just because we can doesn't mean we will.
We have had out feet and a telephone for quite a while now but ordinary citizens rarely make it to town council meetings let a lone make a call to voice their opinion.
and, 2. Even if they did, since when to the politicians ever really listening to their constituants.
Hope this post wasn't too much of a downer. Have a great day.
_________________
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Yup, those big landmark building with lots of people inside that make so juicy targets are reeeeeally hard to find without Goole Earth.
Time travel? (Score:3, Interesting)
Kinda like watching SimCity, but with real roads and buildings...
Re:Time travel? = Already there (Score:4, Informative)
This slashgeo.org [slashgeo.org] story:
All Points Blog links [allpointsblog.com] to a ZDNet article where we learn the time tracking tool in Google Earth Pro will now be available in Google Earth Free [zdnet.co.uk] (and GE Plus, of course!). From the article: "The feature in which a slider is used to scroll through time [...] now features a simplified interface. [...] showing how scientists, who had tracked the movements of a whale shark using GPS, had then mapped the creature's path using the application. Business uses could include fleet tracking or mapping the movements of transport infrastructure according to Google. Jones also described how the new version would enable users to track all of the geostationary satellites orbiting the earth." Ed Parsons was first [edparsons.com] to mention this news item.
And yes, it does also work with SketchUp buildings. Meaning you can scroll through time and watch buildings evoluate. Some published KML demonstrate this.
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Urban Planning By Ordinary Citizens? (Score:3, Funny)
Urban planning is simply too boring otherwise!
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Triggering disasters manually from the menu was a bit... cheap. My favourite approach was always zoning high-density commercial areas right by the end of the main runway at the airport.
Skyscraper goes up... plane goes up... CRAAASSSSHHHH!...
"No, I'm not going to rezone. Why do you ask?"
Skyscraper gets rebuilt... plan
Contradictory statements.... (Score:3, Insightful)
"...help ordinary citizens get more involved in urban development."
So which is it? Seems like they're just playing around and making grandoise statements. I can see how this might be one tool for planners and architects (as if the don't already do this sort of thing), but give me a break -- helping ordinary citizens get involved in urban development? I sure hope not. I'd rather have intelligent people propose good designs. Move along, nothing to see here.
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Contradictory Indeed.... (Score:2)
So would I. I don't know about where you live, but in my neck of the woods that rarely happens. What is more likely to happen is this:
1. Developer proposes project
2. Developer lines pockets of local authorities
3. Local authorities approve project
4. Developer builds project
5. $$ Profit!
6. Local authorities stick it to existing taxpayers to fund infrastructure upgrades that should have been paid for by developer
So yeah, getting ordinary citize
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Why should the infrastructure upgrades have been paid for by the developer (which really means, as you know, by the new homeowners via a bump in the price of their new houses)?
I take it you're talking about sewage, roads, electricity, new schools, et cetera. Thing is, these are all public resources. Everyone gets their indirect and in some cases direct benefit, not just the new homeowners, and everyone has a say in how they're used.
I mean, if you want only the new homeowners t
Maintenance vs. Initial Cost (Score:3)
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I think this kind of sucks. Seems to me if you really want to make sure some p
Is zoning right or wrong? (Score:1)
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I'll tell you why. If I own a piece of land, and it's way out in Bum F@sk Egypt with no lights or running water, I have to pay to have them put them in. It should be no different with a developer who is adding increased stress to our existing infrastructure.
If developers want to continue making obscene profits from properties sold in my town then they should be responsible (within reason) for contributing (not solely supporting) t
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I mean, if the citizens have already voted to subsidize development, it seems a little schizophrenic for them to then turn around and complain that development is costing them money.
Also, what makes development profits "obscene," anyway? They charge all the market will bear, surely. And what's wrong with that?
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Good for the aerial view (Score:3, Funny)
Wishful thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
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And would also be nice to export our cities into this. Ok, maybe not any of us, but professional urban planners, architects, etc. They could grab a "chunk" from the planned site, render the terrain, climate, etc, into SimCity (or something similar), build a city, and if it prospers/lasts, "export" it back.
Contributing to planning schemes... (Score:5, Interesting)
but I really don't believe it.
We just had a developer come in and build an apartment complex next to a mature neighborhood. Imagine that one day you have trees outside your house, and the next day you have a five-storey building.
We photoshopped a representation of what the apartment complex would do to the trees, and presented it to the DeKalb County (GA) commissioners, but it made no difference. I think they could see the added tax revenue to the county, and gave not a damn about the existing houses.
I wasn't personally affected - it was a number of my neighbors at the other end of the neighborhood, but I did learn that tools and the ability to predict impact don't really matter. What really matters is money to the local taxing authority.
Just sayin'.
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Re:Contributing to planning schemes... (Score:4, Informative)
There's an old saying, "if you like the view, buy it". Why shouldn't the owner of the property have the right to develop THEIR property? It's tough to face that as a neighbor, I know, but the issue is that citizen interaction must come before the step in the process where you got involved (which, unfortunately, is the step most people choose to get involved because it is when projects affect them the most). If you had been successful at stopping approval of a proposed development, the developer can simply take the project to circuit court and have the Planning Commission's actions overturned because it would most likely be arbitrary.
Rather, one must get involved at the Comprehensive Plan stage and at the formation of the documents that guide the proposals. Zoning regulations that dictate land uses, open space requirements, density, height and setback issues, etc. I'm sorry you have to live next to something you don't want to have to live next to, but that property owner had a right to use his property, too.
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The developer took the tack that it was land, to do with as he wished, and so he did. Right up to the property line. A standard Atlanta story. It'd have been nice if he'd been willing to be a nicer neighbor, but what can you do?
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Disclaimer: I am an architect.
If we argue only on grounds of capitalism, your point of view is exactly where we end up. However, it has been shown since the Minoan period that cities (really any community) are very complex organisms that depend on us all living together and respecting each other, outside the bounds of simple property ownership.
Who owns the clean air we breath? Sunlight? Are you entitled to cast shadows on my property? How about make noise in the middle of the night that carries past you
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It kind of makes sense that if you are going to live or work in a neighbourhood the first thing to do might not be to piss everyone off.
I know that in the cities that I live and work (in Sweden) there are quite strict rules regarding what you build where. Basically you are not allowed to build buildings which are significantly taller than the neighbouring houses. There are also some restr
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Since I am in the same boat as you, philoso
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I can certainly agree with this, although sometimes it is difficult for everyone to understand what is happening until it is too late.
Not in smaller population areas, but definitely in established cities where people better understand the complexity. Setbacks [wikipedia.org] were developed in New Yo
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I think if there is a reason for this (if in a city and when talking about something like a stretch of land with trees in it) it should be ecological: how does it hit the carbon emissions, how much does it warm the city by for example producing more driveways which are harmful for rainwater and reflect sunlight.
Who will live/use this place - will this use be helping/sustaining/contributing to the existing community living ther
Viewscapes (Score:1)
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It's true, and it's great. (Score:4, Interesting)
I started using sketchup a while back for the geekiest of all possible reasons: creating and displaying models of places for a roleplaying game I was running.
(This is actually a surprisingly hard problem, which no other tools solve well. You need do deal with there being a complex model that already exists, but of which only a dynamic section is actually visible to players. Navigating an actual 3d model gives you the ability to convey great detail quickly, without ever having to worry about giving away too much. The players see exactly what they characters see, and you can get on with the actual game.)
So I started to place the locations that I'd modeled into Seattle (yes, Shadowrun), and was pleased to find that a lot of Seattle was already modeled in Earth, with yet more available in the google "3D Warehouse" [google.com]. It's basically the classic free software development model: everyone in the community works on something they find interesting, and we all benefit from one another's products.
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Um, how is either one of those true? Sketchup is free, and Earth is free, so how exactly does my use of them give Google any money?
And all the models I've created or downloaded are sitting right here on my hard drive, not locked into any kind of wacky drm or server-side-only architecture. While Sketchup defaults to using its own file format, it's h
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I still think Google should use some of their pocket change to hire pilots to photograph some of the many towns that are unusable as satellite images. C'mon Sergei, go through the couch cushions!
All I am saying.... (Score:2)
We used Google Earth and won! (Score:5, Interesting)
As a citizen of Fayetteville (Score:1)
Fayetteville happens to be one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods and JB Hunt are all in the larger metropolitan area. The commercial infrastructure here has exploded in the last decade.
When people hear Arkansas they think of L'il Abner and the like, but the area that Fayetteville is in is nothing like the rest of the state. The population has a higher per-capita income, more education and less crime. Think Seattle, except smaller an
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Seriously, we receive noticeably more rain than Seattle, it just isn't as "rainy" as Seattle. Basically, we get most of our rain in 1-3 inch deluges instead of light mist for days on end.
Also, while Fayetteville itself is VERY progressive, the other cities in the metro are less so. Still nothing like the rest of the state, but not much like Seattle either...more like Dallas in political perspective at least.
Other significant Google Earth recent news... (Score:2)
[ok, I'm too lazy, here's a direct copy of slashgeo's stories]
Following yesterday [slashgeo.org] stories [slashgeo.org], izo writes "It's here. Fresh, crispy and shiny — Google Earth ver 4.0.2080 [google.com]. There is new timeline interface and few new kml tags. [Although there is no demo to test it] My personal winner with this release is
I would be so hooked on this (Score:1)
Urban Planner View (Score:2, Insightful)
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I really don't think that visialization is what urban planning is all about. That is what architecture is for. You can get a much better idea of what a project will look like with a photoshopped picture. It certainly costs less than aerial photoography. The money spent on making made-for-tv graphics should go to hiring brains that can use the right tools to ask the right questions.
The fly-throughs and the zooming - a lot of that is just 'smoke and mirrors' show stuff to sell the project at the c
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I use CAD and visualization software "zooming and fly-throughs" every day while designing and commenting on virtual 3D environments (not city architecture, though). It looks cool and impresses most people, but this feature also makes it easy for many observers to be "wowed" and miss important details.
I want TestDrive: Earth (Score:2)
Gratuitious plug: I do this for a living (Score:2)
http://3dnature.com/scene.html [3dnature.com]
http://3dnature.com/kml.html [3dnature.com]
Here's a heapload of links about this sort of thing done by my users over the past few years. Some
And now... (Score:1)
real time feeds + hi res = coolness (Score:2)
Like weather, traffic jams, tornado locations, animal migrations, polar ice levels, progress building a dam, maybe even someday jetting between the different football stadiums on Sunday morning to watch the different football games live in 3D VR.
TED: I need bigger tubes into my home.
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Planning/Environmental/Historical Projects (Score:2)
I've met a lot of people who want historical or evironmental views of their region.
In the UK, local authorities can grant planning permissions - motorways, supermarkets etc. Using Google Maps would be ideal for this, rather than the PDF files with their itty-bitty descriptions they have now. You could actually *see* which bit of countryside they were going to concrete over.
Impressive Scale Model Archive - Cities (Score:2)