Modelling housing typologies for urban redevelopment scenario planning

Increasing levels of urbanization, combined with growing populations and a need to manage urban redevelopment more sustainably has prompted the need for new tools for urban regeneration in established urban areas. While significant activity is occurring in the areas of volumetric analysis and 3D visualization, utilising these technologies in the development of urban planning tools requires a data schema for defining precinct objects for performance assessment while simultaneously addressing the complexity and interconnected nature of issues relevant to the urban built environment. This paper presents the outcomes of the research and development of a web-based 3D precinct visualization and assessment system, Envision Scenario Planner (ESP), which uses a library of housing typologies to generate easy-to-use, bottom-up, precinct-scale reports on residential infill. The paper illustrates how, through the specification of a residential precinct object data schema and the provision of a set of housing typologies, end users can quickly, and without domain knowledge, generate visualizations and assessments for a variety of housing scenarios, which allows them to determine fit-for-purpose solutions that address a range of issues relevant to contemporary planners and policy makers.