#352: Virtual planning

When planning permission is sought for some new building, it can send small ripples of uncertainty around a neighbourhood. Amongst the local residents, there will usually be some knee-jerk noes and some don’t knows and some don’t cares.

In order to help people form a more informed opinion, today’s invention is simply to create a VR simulation of the proposed building, based on any CAD drawing that has already been prepared.

This would need to be rendered in sufficient detail that issues like the before-and-after light levels could be investigated, together with questions regarding access, services, etc. I’d like to see an acoustic model incorporated which could help assess how noise levels might be affected for example, and for industrial buildings, how waste might be managed.

Only then could all parties really begin to understand the implications of a planned development -and have their concerns validated or negated.

The effort required to build such a model would be substantial (although more useful than a cardboard version) but it would provide a valuable extra hurdle in helping to prevent unwanted development or unfounded objections.