Legible Cities: FocusDependent MultiResolution Visualization of Urban Relationships

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Legible Cities Focus-Dependent Multi-Resolution
Visualization of Urban Relationships

• Remco Chang
• Department of
• Computer Science
• UNC Charlotte

Ginette Wessel College of Architecture UNC
Charlotte
Robert Kosara Department of Computer Science UNC
Charlotte
Eric Sauda College of Architecture UNC Charlotte
Bill Ribarsky Department of Computer Science UNC
Charlotte
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Legible CitiesMotivation

• While working on a graphics problem to render
  large urban environments1,
• we realized
• Visualizing a city should be more than rendering
  its geometric components
• There is a lot of information directly tied to
  geographic locations
• Question how do people think about a city?

1 Remco Chang, Thomas Butkiewicz, Caroline
Ziemkiewicz, Zachary Wartell, Nancy Pollard,
William Ribarsky. Hierarchical Simplification of
City Models to Maintain Urban Legibility. ACM
SIGGRAPH 2006 Technical Sketch
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Legible CitiesSurvey

• How do you perceive the city?
• Describe New York City
• Response 1 New York is large, compact, and
  crowded.
• Response 2 The area where I lived had a strong
  mix of ethnicities.

Geometric,
Information,
View Dependent (Cognitive)
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Legible CitiesDemo

• System Demo

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Legible Cities Research Collaboration

• Urban Visualization
• 3D Models of the City
• Information Display Embedded in the City
• User Interaction for Choosing Point of View

• Architecture
• Theories of City Design and Spatial Structure
• City Conveys Meaning through Visual Qualities
• Individuals Experience of a City

• (Geometric)
• (Information)
• (View Dependence)

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Legible Cities Geometric Theory of Urban
Legibility

• Mental Sketch Maps of Cities
• Finding commonalities
• Elements of Urban Legibility
• Urban Theorist Kevin Lynch

UNC Charlotte Campus
Boston, MA
Boston, MA
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Legible Cities Geometric Modeling

• Definable Elements in the City
• Imageability Identity, Recognition, Meaning
• Spatial Understanding of the City using
• Lynchs Rules of Urban Legibility

Path
Edge
District
Node
Landmark
Kevin Lynch. The Image of the City. Cambridge
MIT Press, 1960.
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Legible CitiesInformation Modeling Iconology

• Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
• Iconology
• Signs, Symbolism, Information
• Information Overlay

R. Venturi, D. S. Brown, and S. Izenour. Learning
form Las Vegas.Cambridge The MIT Press, 1977.
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Legible CitiesView Dependence - Experiential

• Gordon Cullen
• Understanding of Architecture is based on optics,
  place, and content
• Experience of Movement,
  Uncovering, and Texture

G. Cullen. The Concise Townscape. Oxford The
Architectural Press, 1961.
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Legible CitiesInterpretation of Urban Theories

• Geometric
• Hierarchical building clustering using the theory
  of Urban Legibility
• Information
• Matrix view shows information about building
  clusters
• Parallel coordinates show relationships between
  dimensions
• View Dependence (Cognitive)
• 2D translation of yellow sphere changes the
  position of focus
• Z-axis zooming changes the degree of focus

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Legible CitiesCoordinated Views

• Everything is designed around clusters of
  buildings
• Coordinate clusters using colors
• Proximity Gradient from Red to Blue
• Selection - White

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Legible CitiesQuerying

• Identifying areas with specific attributes

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Legible CitiesHow To Use the System

• Using 2000 US Census Data of Charlotte
  (Mecklenburg County) NC
• Looking at
• Ethnicity
• Citizenship status
• Income
• Housing Information
• etc.
• Other dimensions can be used
• Crime rate, traffic, etc

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Legible CitiesScenario 1 Identifying
Neighborhoods

• Task Find areas around downtown Charlotte with
  high Hispanic populations
• Select in the parallel coordinates view
• Finding additional information about High
  Hispanic population regions
• Correlations with other dimensions

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Legible CitiesScenario 2 Segregation
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Legible CitiesScenario 3 Comparing Regions
Davidson, NC
Downtown Charlotte, NC
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Legible CitiesExpert Evaluation

• With 14 Expert Geographic Information System
  (GIS) Users
• Center of Real Estate at UNC Charlotte
• UNC Charlotte Urban Institute
• Charlotte Mecklenburg County GIS Office
• Charlotte Mecklenburg County Planning Department
• Charlotte Mecklenburg County School Systems
• Private Real Estate Developers
• Feedbacks are very positive
• Your tool is providing an on-the-fly,
  interactive way of noticing nearby statistical
  data and their relationships
• Your focus area and peripheral areas are
  cohesively orientated Changing the level of
  detail in other software programs is cumbersome
  because it requires running multiple repetitive
  queries...

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Legible CitiesSummary

• Urban Visualization
• Geometry
• Information
• View Dependence
• Contribution
• Interpretation and visual implementation of
  Architectural theories
• Implementing urban theories that are qualitative
  by nature
• View-Dependent, Multi-Resolution display
• Dont have to zoom in and lose contextual
  information
• Allows the user to explore the city while
  retaining spatial awareness

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Questions?
Thank you!
www.viscenter.uncc.edu
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Legible CitiesBackup Slides
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Legible Cities Three Modalities

• New York is large, compact, and crowded.
• The area where I live there has a strong mix of
  ethnicities.

• Geometric

• Information

• Focus Dependent

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Legible CitiesInformation Theory - Koolhaas

• Rem Koolhaas
• Economic and Political Issues
• Study of Symbolism
• Information Overlay
• City.org Approach

Rem Koolhaas. S,M,L,XL. New York The Monacelli
Press, Inc., 1998