Abstract
The distribution of vegetation within urban zones is well understood to be important for delivery of a range of ecosystem services. While urban planners and human geographers are conversant with methodologies for describing and exploring the volumetric nature of built spaces there is less research that has developed imaginative ways of visualising the complex spatial and volumetric structure of urban vegetation from the treetops to the ground. Using waveform LiDAR data to measure the three-dimensional nature of the urban greenspace, we explore different ways of virtually, and tangibly engaging with volumetric models describing the 3D distribution of urban vegetation. Using waveform LiDAR data processed into voxels (volumetric pixels) and experimenting with a variety of creative approaches to visualise the volumetric nature of the data, we describe the development of new methods for mapping the urban green volume, using a combination of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Minecraft, 3D printing and Computer Numerical Control (CNC) milling processes. We demonstrate how such methodologies can be used to reveal and explore the complex nature of the urban green volume. We also describe the outcome of using these models to engage diverse audiences with the volumetric data. We explain how the products could be used readily by a range of urban researchers and stakeholders: from town and city councils, to architects and ecologists.
Highlights
Landscape research is not solely to blame for this oversight: urban greenspace research is itself heavily reliant on non-volumetric representations with planning maps and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analyses replete with 2D models describing the spatial arrangements of urban vegetation primitives (e.g. simplified maps showing classified areas of grass, shrubs or trees; (Grafius et al, 2016; Gupta, Roy, Luthra, Maithani, & Mahavir, 2016)). 3D greenspace modelling is inconspicuous within architectural praxes, we suggest largely because the planning system doesn't require it
The limitation of standard GIS visualisations is that they can, at best provide a 2.5D view of the data – i.e. a 2 dimensional representation of spatial data, colour coded with additional information describing height
The three dimensional nature of the voxel data explored could not be explored fully by exploiting basic GIS functionality since most current software does not offer full 3D topology as standard
Summary
When considering the volumetric structure of urban landscapes, one must consider heterogeneous mixtures of built structures extending into the sky (Graham & Hewitt, 2012), coupled with subterranean excavations (Garrett, 2016), interspersed with landscape and vegetation structures exhibiting vertical and subterranean characteristics (Davison, Huck, Delahay, & Roper, 2008; Gaston, Warren, Thompson, & Smith, 2005), all at varying heights, depths and spatial scales. In human geography this three-dimensional (3D), vertical urban axis has received considerable academic attention.
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