PROPOLIS

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The First Planning Symposium on
Urban Planning Education with IT/GIS focus
Michael Batty m.batty_at_ucl.ac.uk, Centre for
Advanced Spatial Analysis University College
London http//www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/
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• Outline of the Talk
• IT in the Planning Curricula
• Hardware, Software, Orgware
• The Platform for Planning GIS, RS, Maps
• Extending the Platform 3D GIS and CAD
  Multimedia
• The Network Data Resources
• The Network Public Participation
• Analysis Traditional Modeling and Forecasting
• Visual Modeling
• Teaching Software How high level should we
  teach?
• Organizing Planning in Practice
• New Forms of Planning Using Bottom-Up IT
• Conclusions

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• IT in the Planning Curricula
• How should we teach IT in planning? It is a basis
  for every professional discipline now as
  computers are universal machines
• Choices are between
• a) A separate core of IT methods with
  applications through projects but with standalone
  lectures
• b) IT taught in a project context as and when it
  is needed
• c) A combination of both of these
• But within any curricula, then there are many
  aspects of IT that need to be taught based on

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2. Hardware, Software, Orgware Hardware
computers and networks Different types of
machines and what each can be used for from
mainframe to workstation to PC to handheld
device Networks LANs, Internet, The
client-server model Software Operating Systems
on desktops and on the net, programming, high
level applications and canned software a
hierarchy of software Orgware how organizations
use IT, hierarchies and applications - databases
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3. The Platform for Planning GIS, RS, Maps It
is now quite hard to classify the computing
context that planners need to know about as it is
so wide but a good basis for planning education
would be in dealing with the raw materials of
spatial analysis which revolve around maps In
this way, GIS (Geographic Information Systems)
provide a very good entry point as they deal with
maps and how they can be represented and
constructed using computers providing a focus
on data analysis involving statistics,
synthesis hence design through ideas about map
layers and ideas about the third dimension
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GIS provides a good platform for teaching IT
applications in planning
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Let me illustrate some basic applications that we
use in teaching second year UG in geography
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This is to show how we can compute things in GIS
population density pop/area
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This shows how we can move from 2D to 3D and
thereby give some greater visual clarity to our
analysis, and it also helps link GIS to design
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4. Extending the Platform 3D GIS and CAD
Multimedia We can use GIS to illustrate the
basic idea that we can communicate our plans
through software and the extension to 3D, to
multimedia based on photorealism, panoramas and
so on is essential here. Let us illustrate some
of the things that are possible
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London Bridges Here is an example of multimedia
we were are showing how we can make movies of all
kinds of design like environments
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5. The Network Data Resources Planning data is
now almost entirely digital and some it is very
well organized in the UK. Students can get access
to Census data at fine scale and also map
boundary data across the network from Data
Centers which are organized for the UK university
system by JISC This data can only be unlocked if
students have access to GIS of the kind we have
just illustrated all this is web based Here
are some examples of the service
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UK GOVERNMENT TREASURY DEPT OF EDUCATION AND
SCIENCE
Data and Software Purchases from Commercial
Sector
HEFCE
Research Councils EPSRC, ESRC, MRC
Networks
Data Archives
JISC
National Initiatives
National Services
UNIVERSITIES - RESEARCH INSTITUTES
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6. The Network Public Participation Most of
what is now being done in IT is through the web
as well as the desktop and the client serve model
is writ large. Increasingly these products in 3D
GIS, multimedia and graphics browser technologies
are being used for public participation and for
communicating planning ideas to a wider public
most municipalities have planning applications on
the web e.g. Wandsworth After this we will look
at our own project in Woodberry Down where we are
building a web site for public participation
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The Woodberry Down Project Regeneration of a
poor community in Hackney Our experiment brings
all these ideas together - delivering
information, wiring the city, helping us as
planners to develop new tools, and of course
Visualisation Woodberry Down is an estate of
2500 houses built in the early 1970s, now run
down and heavily vandalised, with high rates of
crime, drugs, deprivation - all the indicators of
inner city decay at its worst. A massive
programme of regeneration is beginning.
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The Plans for Woodberry Down
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Professional and Public Engagement
In our new project for the GLA, we are beginning
to merge many of these techniques to provide a
much more all-encompassing experience for
users. This is part of an e-democracy project
financed by the GLA. This is finally our long
awaited Virtual London construction that we have
been attempting to get funded for many
years. There is a strong virtual worlds, gaming
simulation element to it. We intend to
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This is so far for a restricted area around the
Pool of London but is a pilot for a much wider
program which hopefully will be piloted to other
UK towns and cities We have a lot of good data
courtesy of various agencies such as OS.
Mastermap and Cities Revealed for backcloth,
LiDAR for 3D and so on
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• Three-D Fly-Throughs
• Panoramic imagery that you have already seen
• Zoomable information maps and we have one already
  in production let me show you a sample
• Virtual Exhibition spaces based on virtual
  worlds To illustrate this I will need to log
  onto such a world and manipulate this but it is
  too tricky on this laptop so here is a simple
  movie from Andy Hudson-Smiths thesis
• Let me show you some examples to conclude

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7. Analysis Traditional Modeling and Forecasting
This is very different from what is simulated in
urban growth models
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8. Visual Modeling The idea in GIS of map layers
is central to the idea of synthesis in design
here is an example of overlaying maps to produce
composite indicators Then we will show how we
can produce these as surfaces in 3D and slice
them to give different classes or levels Again
much of this is now on the web network enabled
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Slicing the Surface A Generic
Methodology Basically once we have the surface
we can slice it to produce different levels of
town centredness and then get users to judge
which are the most likely We find town centres
are very sharply defined using this method. We
have draped an OS map over the centredness
surface and then we can show how we slice it in 3D
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9. Teaching Software How high level should we
teach? Clearly there is now so much material to
teach that we should probably no teach any form
of programming it should be based on using
packages and getting skills in using packages I
have not mentioned really basic skills like web
access, PowerPoint and word processing and so on
all these are important but there is an
increasing feeling that these should be taught in
the high school more like driving instruction
than university skills, but there needs to be
considerations for these
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10. Organizing Planning in Practice Much of this
impacts on planning in practice and there should
be some concern about how such IT influences the
way planning teams are organized and the way
offices are managed I should also note that IT
has an impact on the city and this might be
linked to such education through IT modules
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11. New Forms of Planning Using Bottom-Up IT One
important issue is that the public at large are
beginning to learn about how IT can be used to
become aware in an environmental sense To close
let us just show how we are beginning to teach
planning in the community for therein lies the
use of these techniques I will show what we
have done in Hackney in the Building Exploratory,
The Teviot Centre and the Brickfields Project
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Brickfields
http//www.brickfields.org.uk/
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The Hackney Building Exploratory
The Exploratory is devoted to learning about the
environment, mainly in conventional terms but
there is an emergent digital emphasis. Here are
some examples of what goes on traditionally and
less so.
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What the Hackney Building Exploratory is all about
Teaching Kids to Explore their Local Environment
Building Models of the Local Environment
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Children Playing in the Exploratory
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12. Conclusions I have not in any sense shown
you what a curricula for IT education in planning
is all about. I think there is so much material
that it is necessary to adapt it to the local
context in terms of what skills faculty have and
what the students are sympathetic towards. I do
think that formal lectures of various kinds are
required rather than developing a techniques in
situ entirely although project applications are
essential too.