Urban Sketcher: Mixing Urban Realities using Mixed Reality Technology

Urban planning and design needs to explore a wide range of aspects concerning the built and social environment. Hence, city-development projects are vastly complex; they affect investors, technical specialists and citizens, and they play an increasing role in community politics. It is desirable to involve the stakeholders from an early stage in the planning process, to enable their different viewpoints to be successfully expressed and comprehended. The objective of this process is to confront and refine these viewpoints and to ultimately achieve a common vision represented by the urban project. The exchange of information is the key in this process, mediating technology aids the individuals’ engagement and their understanding of the urban planning issues at stake. The motivation behind this thesis is to enhance such communication processes and decision making with Mixed Reality (MR). MR is a symbiosis of the real world and a virtual information space which are synchronized by MR technology with respect to human perception. MR mediates the ongoing process of human communication, development and collaboration where individuals engage to express their understanding of reality and engage to experience the understanding of others, which can be described as mixing realities.