Site-Scale Digital Twinning: From City-Scale Modeling to Multiple Micro-Urban Interventions

Abstract

This paper explores the application of digital twins (DT) in urban planning and landscape design. Initially developed in fields such as manufacturing and engineering, DT has emerged as a critical tool for replicating and simulating the physical world within a virtual environment. Its application enables real-time monitoring and future transformation simulations, offering profound implications for urban planning and landscape design. Despite its broad applicability, implementing DT in less controlled contexts like urban landscape environments presents unique challenges, particularly drawing skepticism around the feasibility of launching a universal city-level DT. This paper advocates for site-scale DTs focusing on specific urban elements, such as parks, buildings, and infrastructure, to enable more controlled and effective modeling environments, emphasizing the importance of creating an urban DT network through serial site-scale DTs. This approach requires ongoing experimentation in landscape and urban design practices and supportive economic and policy environments to foster interdisciplinary research and design and market adoption. Drawing from three design proposals, this paper explores the transformative potential of site-scale DTs, highlighting its role in creating more interactive, participatory, and responsive environments by integrating citizen data on emotions, interactions, and health factors, thereby advancing the design-intervened virtual-physical interface of public spaces and urban landscapes.

● Advocates for site-scale DT to enhance integration with existing urban design and planning practices

● Reviews the genealogy of the DT concept and current challenges for DT practices, highlighting the need for improved public engagement and inter-departmental collaboration

● Compares three site-scale design interventions, showcasing the capture of emotion, interaction, and health data while advancing a new virtual-physical urban interface

● Explores how site-scale DT can create more interactive, participatory, and responsive urban environments by integrating diverse data types and fostering public engagement

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Digital Twin / Urban Planning / Landscape Design / Urban Sensing / Public Engagement / Installation Design

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