Comprehensive Exploration and Analysis of CityEngine as a Novel Tool for Smart Urban Planning and Design (Case Study: Narmak Neighborhood, Tehran)

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 PhD Candidate, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Iran University of Art, Tehran, Iran.

2 Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

The rapid growth of urbanization and the increasing complexities of urban management have highlighted the need for innovative and efficient tools in the field of urban planning and design. Today's urban planning and design community, in the information era, requires novel technology-driven systems to make better decisions and achieve improved results in the shortest possible time. CityEngine, as a city-scale data-driven smart system, offers significant potential for improving the quality of urban planning and design. This applied research aims to introduce and comprehensively analyze CityEngine in the context of urban planning and design, with the Narmak neighborhood of Tehran  as a case study. Data were collected using various methods, including document review, field surveys, and spatial data analysis. The findings of the study show that CityEngine can be effectively applied in various aspects of urban planning and design, including: Dynamic 3D visualization of urban space (detailed and comprehensive urban plans, zoning and design control planning, 3D cadastral planning, environmental planning and design, strategic urban planning), real-time reporting of urban data for quantitative analysis, evaluation and management of the urban environment along with providing a communication platform for public participation, and integration with other relevant urban application software. The results of this research demonstrate that CityEngine, as a novel and efficient tool in the field of urban planning and design, can contribute to the creation of smart and sustainable cities. In CityEngine for urban planning and design modeling, the following four main steps are presented in the paper: (1) data preparation and processing (2) Classification of urban elements (3) Creating and defining rules (4) Generating a model and modifying it. It can be comprehensively  acknowledged that CityEngine facilitates: the integration of scattered urban data and the creation of a smart two- and three-dimensional database, the reduction and intelligent monitoring of urban violations through the modeling of urban information (zoning regulations, density, etc.), increased  speed and less waste of time in planning, designing and managing urban projects, enhanced citizen involvement in addressing urban issues through online sharing of plans, the ability to intelligently model all types of elements and objects in the city, including buildings, streets, vegetation, urban furniture, support for integrated management city through the creation of manageable dashboards and real-time control, access to  information on smart 3D urban elements with the ability to view all features in 3D and update information, improved  city maps with interactive 3D visualization to help understanding of the urban environment for managers and citizens, production of past, present and future models of cities to observe and compare urban changes, designing city redevelopment scenarios and examining the effects of each  in real-time, analyzing the three-dimensional view of the city to accurately assess the effects of urban visual permeability, and conducting city simulation based on real geographic information system (GIS) data to improve 3D city perception making it effective and useful.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Fine Arts: Architecture & Urban Planning
Volume 28, Issue 4
December 2022
Pages 7-19

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