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Student Work in Urban Planning

Using 360-degree video in local planning decisions

 

This story has three parts, involving a studio course in our program, a guest lecturer who spoke in February 2003, and a student interning with a local community.

In Spring 2002, second semester graduate students in our Applied Planning Workshop studio course worked with the City of New Berlin to explore strategies for improving the tax base generated from three industrial parks in the city. The parks had little identity and minimal marketing had been done to attract businesses to the parks. Among the students' recommendations, the city should work with the industrial park tenants to improve the visual appearance of the industrial park, including creating attractive signage at the entrances to the area. Economic development planners with the city were extremely pleased with the complete report and began to work on implementing many of the recommendations.

Fast forward to February 2003. Michael Shiffer, Vice President of Planning and Development Chicago Transit Authority and Associate Professor, Urban Planning & Policy, University of Illinois, Chicago, came to speak on a snowy evening. He demonstrated a number of presentation techniques that he has pioneered with CTA to help the public, planners, and decision-makers to better understand existing conditions so priority development can be done with more visually realistic information. Shiffer's techniques include the use of video clips showing the areas around transit stations, including complete 360-degree videos.

At the time of Professor Shiffer's demonstration, Andy Cross was working as a student planning intern for the City of New Berlin. The city was beginning to identify sites for the location of signage for the industrial park. Inspired by Professor Shiffer, Andy suggested to city officials that more visual--and especially video--information be included in their presentations to stakeholders.

Andy created pdf files with embedded links to photos and videos. Take a look at the information Andy developed.

Windows Media Player or

• Establishment signs in New Berlin industrial park (PDF:533k)
  (click on the pushpin icons).
• Video clips (.mpg format) of proposed intersections for  industrial park gateway signage (PDF:526k)
  (click on the numbered dots for the video clips).

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