12 research outputs found
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Blueprints for Green Communities: Climate change visioning and participatory landscape planning for resilient low-carbon communities
Emerging 3D visualization tools and future visioning methods offer new ways to make climate change impacts and potential responses explicit, and accelerate holistic solutions. Previous research at UBC’s Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP) and elsewhere confirms that 4D visioning processes using landscape visualizations of recognizable places under alternative future conditions can improve community engagement and awareness on complex environmental and planning issues (Tress and Tress, 2002; Sheppard and Meitner, 2005; Schroth, 2007). This paper examines a visioning process (Sheppard, 2008) that applies visualization and other landscape planning methods to explore high and low-carbon futures of the affluent, sub-urban hillside community of North Vancouver with climate change, and its surrounding scenic North Shore sub region of Metro Vancouver, BC, Canada
Evaluating presentation formats of local climate change in community planning with regard to process and outcomes
This study synthesizes two evaluations of a local climate change planning process in a rural town in British Columbia (Canada), which was supported through landscape visualizations. First, the impact of the visualizations, based on scientific environmental modeling and presented in three different presentation formats, verbal/visual presentation, posters and a virtual globe, was evaluated with regard to immediate impacts during the process. Second, the long-term impacts on decision-making and actual outcomes were evaluated in a retrospective evaluation 22 months after the end of the initial planning process. Two results are highlighted: according to the quantitative pre-/post-questionnaires, the visualizations contributed to increased awareness and understanding. Most importantly, the retrospective evaluation indicated that the process informed policy, operational and built changes in Kimberley, in which the landscape visualizations played a role. The post interviews with key decision-makers showed that they remembered most of the visualizations and some decision-makers were further using them, particularly the posters. The virtual globe seemed to be not a "sustainable" display format suitable for formal decision-making processes such as council meetings though. That may change with the further mainstreaming of visualization technologies or mobile devices. Until then, we recommend using display formats that can be re-used following a specific planning event such as an Open House, to ensure on-going support for effective decision-making over the longer-term
Visual simulation : a user's guide for architects, engineers, and planners
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