Presenting and communicating plans

Felt

Felt (www.felt.com) is a collaborative mapping tool which can be used free of charge to map locations or projects and development proposals individually or as part of a wider team. Felt also provides a function to share and comment, allowing it to be used for community engagement. Nick Wright (Nick Wright Planning) uses Felt to produce professional quality maps and has during 2023 encouraged further digital adoption of this and similar technologies.

Felt is also a resource that could be used by communities in developing Local Place Plans. The mapping functions are easy to use and the scale required can be high level or more site specific. This is illustrated through the maps below (Stratherrick and Foyers Local Place Plan https://bit.ly/SFLPP2023).

Felt and Nick Wright recently (June 2023) delivered a seminar for planners on how the mapping can be used in planning: https://youtu.be/odpHcnaYYdI?si=q3mErmNb_lwUV6Jk.

Stratherrick and Foyers Local Place Plan

Highland Council’s first Local Place Plan was registered in September 2023. The Local Place Plan was facilitated by the Stratherrick and Foyers Community Trust and the Stratherrick and Foyers Community Council, with the professional support of consultants including; Nick Wright Planning, Icecream Architecture and Willie Miller Urban Design. The Local Place Plan is an example of where collaborative design techniques have allowed for the co-production of this document. The Local Place Plan is hosted on a project webpage https://www.communityfuture.net which allows documents to be viewed and a news page showing the outputs from some of the consultation undertaken with the community. The website is a ‘Scoop’ by Icecream Architecture. ‘Scoop’ is aimed at providing digital placemaking tools that are ready-made for most communities, but with an understanding that all places are different.

The website is interactive and very visual which encourages viewers to get a quick understanding of the community and an eagerness to read on. This website has been used throughout the duration of the Local Place Plan preparation and includes links to zoom calls, community surveys, interactive videos Flourish has been used to create interactive charts (https://www.communityfuture.net/surveyresults) which allows data to visualised in a way that is easy to understand and powerful.

3d place models – Rotterdam 3d

The Dutch city of Rotterdam is in the process of transitioning 2D mapping already available of the city to a 3D model of the city. Whilst the process in developing ‘Rotterdam 3d’ evolved a number of years ago, this has continued to be revisited and developed over recent years. This technical process has involved using existing city maps, structured and textured 3D data from LiDAR, blueprints of buildings and transport networks, and real-time sensors.

Using the Digital Twins initiative, the city of Rotterdam is using a new range of applications such as energy consumption analysis, asset management of the subsurface infrastructure, and urban flooding applications, among others. This is allowing for more detailed analysis around planning issues such as mobility and healthcare. The emphasis on this work has been to create a better quality of life for residents in the city.

Rotterdam 3d can be viewed here: www.3drotterdam.nl.