Virtual Cities in Urban Planning: The Uppsala Case Study

Gearing cities towards a path of sustainability is a daunting task. The urban models that we have come to accept during the 20 century need to be revisited, but change, even if welcomed in abstract, is usually met in reality with enormous resistance from the economic and political models that underlie our cities. Some of the most powerful tools for promoting change are those related to conceptualization and visualization. When considering urban plans that aren't just incremental improvements over what already exists, city officials, urban planners and the general public must be able to visualize not just the merits of those plans in isolation, but how they interact with all the infrastructure that already exists. This paper describes one such urban plan that has been under consideration in the city of Uppsala, Sweden, for the past 5 years: a solar-powered Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system connecting the main train station to the Hospital and the University. The process of discussing the PRT system included the development of a virtual reality simulation of parts of the city. We report on the process and role of this virtual reality simulation.