04 - Green city & Virtual Reality - SHUE
04 - Green city & Virtual Reality - SHUE
Relevance of urban green
Urban green definitions
urban greenspace
For al lnatural spaces in cities, mostly including water bodies
More accurate:
urban green
All natural areas and elements in cities:
- Urban green space
- Urban greenscape: small scale natural elements (like trees)
Urban green = urban green space + urban greenscape
| Urban green = | Urban green space | Urban greenscape |
|---|---|---|
| Immersion | high | low |
| Effort | high | low |
| Frequency | low | high |
| Intent | high/yes | low/no |
| Parks are fantastic but we don't visit them as often as the urban greenscape. |
Functions of urban green
lnadschappelijke inpassing: Using nature to hide ugly things.
- Hide artificial things
- Offers a meeting place: social
- Psychological
- Transport
- Production of: wood, food, oxygen
- Invites recreation
- Enhancing comfort (reduce heat island effect)
- Altering sound
- Doesn't reduce noise level, but masks ugly sounds (highways)
- Water management
- Educational
- Ecological: green is habitat
- Pollution mitigation
- Financial?
Main dilemma in urban green
- Main dilemma is on costs and benefits
- Costs:
- clear
- in euros
- Benefits
- uncertain
- "unmeasurable"
- ont in euros
- Costs:
- Discrepancy in where costs and benefits land
- City has cost
- Benefits are for the people
- They are not directly paying for those costs
Researching urban green
Research is often on the (non-monetary) benefits
There needs to be some data collection.
Needs:
- Manipulate the urban (green) environment
- Treatment group
- Control group
- Ceteris Paribus (keep the rest the same)
How do I manipulate the urban environment?
- Adding, removing urban green impractical
- change in weather, light, etc.
We could use different locations with different conditions. There are still some issues:
- Different background (visual, sound, street activity, possibly weather)
- Different route to location
A possible solution is making use of technology: VR. It can't measure every aspect (temperature) but it keeps every condition consistent.
- Easy to change conditions
- Full control of different conditions
Virtual and Augmented reality: VR/AR
- Fictional vs existing
- Fictional environment prevents influence of:
- memory effect
- place attachment
- functional aspects
- But, Validity of fictional environments? Can they be considered as valid as real environments?
- Fictional environment prevents influence of:
- Photo-reality vs computer generated graphics
- Photo reality only possible with existing environments
- Virtual environments can assist in researching
- Existing environments
- Previous environments
- Future environments
- Conceptual environments
- A mix of all above
ve, vr and ar
- VE: Virtual environment: a computer generated environment
- VR: Virtual Reality: a VE with interactivity
- AR: Augmented Reality: viewing the actual environment with VR elements added
Potential issues
- Ethics
- Safety
Technical issues:
- We need a lot of computing power to simulate the environment: especially nature, that is very complex
- solution: low poly or flat