An Interactive and Responsive Virtual Reality Environment for Participatory Urban Planning

Urban simulation using Virtual Reality can provide an interactive and responsive environment for participatory planning to evaluate alternative designs, regulations and environmental policies. The objectives therefore are that the virtual world is perceived as real and enables people to feel connected to the world and to bring VR technology to all citizens so that they can help to shape the city in a participating way. Therefore, we present a virtual reality environment with multi-modal traffic simulation for participatory planning of urban areas. Using a gamified approach with story-telling enables to engage and guide participants through the environment accompanied by virtual questionnaires for in-situ feedback. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of virtual reality environments to perform participation via immersion and interaction for gathering immediate and authentic feedback guided with a systematic approach to simplify analysis. We describe the technology, developments and theories behind virtual Environments and simulation. Finally, we provide insights from our evaluation of the proposed urban simulation used in two real world projects. The combination of highly immersive and interactive virtual environments with traffic Simulation was appreciated by the participants and resulted in highly valuable feedback for professional planners.