PICO-UNION : Planners Will ‘See’ New Neighborhood

The City Council has approved funds for a computer system that will enable planners and community members to “see” new neighborhood plans for Pico-Union and other areas of the city.

The motion to authorize the $175,000 purchase was made by Councilman Mike Hernandez, who represents Pico-Union.

The virtual-reality system allows users to view proposed changes in design, and incorporates census, crime, and transportation data to generate dynamic demonstrations that can even simulate traffic congestion.

“These visualization systems allow you to take complex visual information and render it in a graphic form understandable to anybody,” said Richard Weinstein, dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. “The images are so realistic you would have thought it is a videotape of the community.”

Dubbed the “Crimson Reality Engine,” the technology is similar to that used to generate special effects in “Jurassic Park” and “Terminator 2.” Silicon Graphics, the manufacturer, offered the system to UCLA’s architecture school at a “deep, deep discount” because it wanted to help with the efforts to rebuild Los Angeles, said Bill Jepson, the graduate school’s director of computing.

For the Pico-Union project, the Urban Innovations Group will manage a team of UCLA faculty and students, drawn from nine professional programs, including the schools of law, social welfare, nursing, public health and medicine. UIG, founded in 1971, is a nonprofit arm of the architecture and urban planning school.