Future illustrative and participative urban planning: Developing concepts for co-creation

The starting point of this paper is to develop and experiment with new participatory web-based design services to visualize future urban environments with mixed reality and other content technologies. We have created new visualizations and virtual environments by mixing panoramic imaging and architectural drawings of future urban plans. In order to involve citizens in urban planning projects, we have also implemented user-centred interactions such as questionnaires and commenting tools. In this paper, we discuss how new visual web-based service concepts using mixed reality technologies can be used for future participatory urban planning. To ensure political, economic and social relevance of the developed urban planning service concepts, we have conducted an interview study that clarifies qualitatively, how political decision-makers and other stakeholders perceive the new digital concepts. In addition, we have piloted our participative urban planning demo with users. In the political decision-making processes, the new tools were expected to bring certainty and eliminate uncertainty. New participatory design tools for urban planning should also be efficient at collecting and processing user feedback and other data.