Visit the website and demo the app.

“The Community Comments tool has been a great way for AATA to gather community feedback quickly and systematically. Because all of our services have a geographic component, the ability to PLOT comments has been extremely valuable – comments come to us ‘pre-sorted’ by location. It is also nice for those making the comments, because they can see what others have said about the areas they care about.”

Michael Benham,
Ann Arbor Transit Authority
Special Assistant for Strategic Planning

PlaceVision partnered with Sasaki Design to build The Tomorrow Plan (TTP) website. It supports the two-year development of the Des Moines regional plan through an event calendar, a resource library, and blog. For idea sharing, TTP integrated with two community engagement applications: MindMixer for idea generation and commenting and Community Remarks to power a regional photo contest where contestants submit their photo to a map.

The website is the central hub for information, news, press releases, announcements, and team commentary for the project. Its design reinforces the brand through strong visual imagery which functions to make the planning process memorable.

All project materials such as presentations, images from events, documents, and reports can be downloaded or viewed on the site which is updated weekly.

If you are looking for a web development team to expand your planning consultant firm, please consider us! One of the main reasons planners like working us is because we understand what planners do and how they do it. We not only get it, but have planning experience which enables us to provide a full range of services and products to meet a community’s needs..

Have a blog or thinking about starting one? Not all blogs are created equal. A few key strategies can help you gain attention and build followers.
Here are some guidelines we follow to help our clients get the most out of blogging:

• Get a custom domain mane for your blog
• Use design elements that reinforce your personality
• Install WordPress as your blogging platform
• Install anti-spam filters to avoid unwanted spammers
• Use good quality images that clearly illustrate your point

See examples of our custom blogs:
Indigo Architect
Cities & Design

Community Remarks™ is an app PlaceVision developed to facilitate place-based communication online. It has been successfully utilized in the City of Buffalo, NY and Northbrook, Illinois to get citizens talking about what’s great and not-so-great about their community. We are currently in the process of deploying customized Community Remarks™ solutions for a variety of communities across the nation which got us thinking of several ways folks could utilize this tool.

Here is how it works (in a nutshell):

1. Drop a place marker on the map
2. Make a comment
3. Vote comments up or down

Features such as voting, the comment form, and place marker images can be customized. This is because the Community Remarks app was built with core features and functionality that can easily be “skinned” to change its appearance. This opens up opportunities for the application to be utilized in a variety of ways such as:

1. To solicit feedback from citizens during the creation of an urban plan

If you are creating a downtown area plan, regional transportation plan, or zoning ordinance this tool is proven to increase public participation and provide a platform during community meetings.

2. To document/survey properties in the field and create a live report on an iPad

If you are conducting multiple field surveys and site visits to document existing conditions, this tool can provide a secure easy to use web-based GIS formatted for an iPad.

3. As photo contest to get place-specific photos and vote on them

Thinking about gathering photos from the community? Do more than just post an entry form on your site, enable people to tell you where the photo was taken, then let the community vote on the winner.

4. To report non-emergency issues or place-specific concerns to your government

Are there issues in your neighborhood that are easier to express on a map? Place-based commenting is the best way to answer what and where at once.

5. Make your own “personalized” maps of your favorite restaurants, hot spots, and share with friends

Want to express yourself? Been there, done that? This tool provides you with a personal database of place specific comments. Use it to create a map of your favorite restaurants, shops, hot spots. Invite your friends to collaborate and share their favorites into a private, personal map.

If you’d like to know more, check it out at the Community Remarks™ web site.

Imagine you are within 60 feet of the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons site on the Georgia Tech campus. You have tuned into the local AR channel on your iPhone. “Ding, Come see what the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons will look like. ” You have just been notified that you are within proximity (60 feet or less) of the Clough GeoSpot, denoted by an emblem on the ground at the location you should stand.

Once standing at the GeoSpot, you indicate your presence to the browser, Argon. You also check off on the option to increase your accuracy by loading a panoramic image from your location to steady and more accurately line up the augmented graphics with surrounding buildings.

Argon then displays augmented content authored for this scene. Although the Clough Learning Commons is currently under construction, the browser lets you to see what the building will look like once complete. Interactive elements such as clickable icons and buttons on and around the new structure open content bubbles, play videos, and present images and informative text.

Point the phone around to see various parts of the building, sidewalks, and landscaping. Landscaping and public space decisions can be finalized on site by evaluating options. Sine it’s connected to the internet, votes on the best option are tallied in real-time.

The building rendering can be switched out for a wire frame version to reveal interior rooms and circulation patterns. An image gallery can be seamlessly integrated into the browser to flip through renderings of the building over a 24 hour time period. A video monologue from the architect tells the story of the building’s design process. Once the building is complete, there is the potential for students and faculty to leave comments around the building through augmented tags. Rarely do architects have the opportunity to retrieve direct feedback from the users of their design. The use of place-specific tags and comments connect what, where, and who to the physical environment.

The visualization can be any combination of the following features:

• Region trigger informing channel subscriber they are within proximity to a GeoSpot

• Introduction audio narrative auto plays on check in

• Building rendering shown based on time of day

• Image gallery flips through building renderings (1 rendering for every 2 hours) to show shadows, lighting, etc.

• Landscaping, sidewalks, and exterior finishes can be turned on and off

• Building can be shown as wire frame

• Building material callouts can be turned on

• Video from architect, student body, or representative

• Users can go “inside” the building by clicking on a placed icon that reveals the interior view from that location

• Callouts can contain a variety of content for marketing, PR, or wayfinding purposes

In ESRI GIS, you can export your data as a KML file. There is a free extension you can download to provide you with this capability. Then, I uploaded the KML file to the web server. Then I went to the Google Maps page, maps.google.com where in the address bar, I put the path to one of my kml files which looks something like this: http://www.buffalogreencode.com/kml/strong_weak.kml. Google Maps will load this KML file as a layer once I hit the search button with the above file path in the address search bar.

I then customized the size of it by selecting the share link and customizing the size and original zoom. Google Maps will provide you with iframe code that you can copy paste into your web page to embed the map on your site. Check out all 45 KML Google Maps I created to summarize the citizen of Buffalo’s concerns and the future possibilities.

Your website should facilitate a conversation around your projects, community, and city in which you work. It should be easy for you to post content to your site and social networks automatically. Facebook, Twitter, Ning, and third party sites such as AIA KnowledgeNet (via RSS) can be connected so that anything posted on your site appears on other sites as well. You should be able to monitor your effectiveness in driving traffic and interest.

Visualizing building data can be quite useful and help to showcase development in context. Emerging technologies in Augmented Reality among other web-based tools can “mashup” GIS, CADD, and databases into one viewing environment for the web and mobile devices.

Citizen commenting applications are hot right now. Anything that solicits community feedback will drive traffic and provide a platform for community dialog. Podcast tours that combine images and audio can be effectively used for guided tours to educate visitors and residents about the past, present, and future of a place.

Urban planners struggle with visualizing streetscape improvements. Commercial streetscape improvement plans (such as TIF districts) can be interactive to show before and after development. For districts with facade improvement programs, the visualization can show a business owner what appropriate alterations such as windows, signage, entryways, and planters would look like. In historically sensitive areas, a new development can be derailed if the community doesn’t like it. Interactive visualization of the proposed building’s facade allows for individual features such as porches versus juliette balconies or a pitched versus flat roof to be switched out during a community meeting. Cost factors can be attached to each concession to monitor design changes the market could actually support. I’ve been in many community meetings where the developer had a difficult time communicating with residents because he didn’t have a way to interactively show alternatives and the costs attached to them. Ultimately, these community meetings ended with communication failure.

If you struggle to utilize visualization and communication strategies, then you need an expert who knows how to affordably leverage technology for your profession.

Reality mining is answering the questions “where are the people?” and “what are they doing right now?” Location, call logs, and proximity are data that is gathered from smart phones daily. But, how do we make sense of this data to build more intelligent spaces that better serve people?

Sense Networks is striving to answer these questions with an application called macrosense that strives to “extract value from their location data, one of the most unbiased and rich sources of intelligence on human behavior.”

Just how do they obtain location based data from hundreds of people? I’m not sure that it can be purchased like a marketing list. Mobile apps like Foursquare and Whrrl (which I don’t use because I don’t want anyone to know where I am at any given moment) require you to “check in” to physical locations. These apps are tracking their users which will eventually open up place-based advertising opportunities.

On Nov 3, 2010, Facebook announced it wants to replace Google in the mobile search. Instead of searching for sushi restaurants nearby on Yelp or Google, Facebook will help you based on where your friends have recently eaten or suggest. The influence of Facebook “friends” can change the dynamics of how people move through a city at any given time. And Facebook already knows a lot about each user including their geography.

4% of Americans use location-based services, but it will grow just as cell phone ownership did. More data will be available (probably for purchase) to answer questions about who is doing what at any given time. Imagine how this data becomes intelligence behind a plan. Location-based intelligence has the potential to shift the art of place-making.