Planning Support Systems
PRICE: RM140.00
Integrating Geographic Systems, Models, and Visualization Tools
Land-use professionals from every field and at every level -- from urban planners to commercial developers to transportation system engineers -- are increasingly turning from traditional modes of planning to computer technology. As they do, they are finding extraordinarily detailed visualizations, animated and manipulable 3-D models, and the vast databases and supermaps of geographic information systems (GIS) to help them.
Increased efficiency at every stage of the planning process is the most obvious advantage of these powerful new tools, but other, more subtle ones are just as valuable: the intersection of planning and technology, for example, is helping integrate the work of everyone involved in the planning process, making it easier for planners to plan with the people in their communities, not just for them. Citizen-planners can now virtually walk, drive, or fly through models of their communities; move buildings from block to block, or tear them down entirely; build complete subdivisions wherever they want them; run new highways in and around town -- simultaneously seeing with their own eyes the consequences of their actions.
About the editors:
Planning Support Systems offers views of all these new possibilities for land-use planning from the acknowledged experts in the field. Richard Brail of Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and Richard Klosterman of the University of Akron, have assembled papers from colleagues around the globe who are working to expand both the applicability and understanding of the most important issues in computer-aided planning.