Communicating complexity: interactive model explorers and immersive visualizations as tools for local planning and community engagement

Sustainable community development requires reconciliation of social, economic, and environmental imperatives (Dale 2001; Newman and Jennings 2008; Rydin 2010); therefore, it is best performed through integrated approaches that recognize how plans, polices, and strategies link to broader goals for humans and the environment (Ling et al. 2009; Shaw et al. 2014; Dale et al. 2018). Significant advancements in computation and modelling have led to sophisticated tools that can be used to understand the complex, interrelated considerations involved in land use and community development (Almeida et al. 2009; Chase et al. 2010; Keirstead and Sivakumar 2012), and accordingly, these tools can support integrated planning efforts (Newell et al. 2018, 2020). Models can be used to elucidate a variety of different outcomes associated with community plans and strategies, such as transportation effectiveness, land use efficiency, energy consumption, water consumption and conservation, and (or) greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Salvini and Miller 2005; Wagner and Wegener 2007; Eluru et al. 2008; Frank et al. 2009; Sperling and Berke 2017). However, because of their complexity, it can be difficult for diverse users and stakeholders to interpret and fully understand the implications of model outputs (Newell and Picketts 2020a, 2020b), thereby presenting a need for complementary tools that clearly communicate these outputs and allow for effective exploration and understanding of model outcomes. This research explores such communication tools, namely an interactive “model explorer” and realistic visualizations, to examine their potential as tools for supporting participatory processes and community engagement in integrated planning.

Stakeholder participation is widely recognized as an integral component of effective planning processes (Raymond and Brown 2007; Robinson et al. 2011; Sheppard et al. 2011). Governance is most effective when done in cooperation with those that experience its associated problems and opportunities (Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009), and stakeholder participation in community planning ensures a plan is grounded in local realities and the appropriate social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental contexts (Ling et al. 2009). Accordingly, tools for effectively engaging stakeholders and community members are invaluable for effective planning. Although models have potential for supporting integrated community planning, these tools often experience an “implementation gap”, meaning that the insights and knowledge gained through the tools are not often effectively put into practice (Silva et al. 2017). A major contributor to this gap is a lack of attention to the user experience, or how users interact with the tools and gain insights from model outputs (Russo et al. 2015). Therefore, if models are to be effective tools for communicating to the public, they need to be approachable, usable, and developed in accordance with the needs of the intended users.

A number of different approaches and techniques exist for communicating outcomes of modelling exercises to diverse community members. One approach involves creating a clear, intuitive, and engaging interface that allows users to explore these outcomes, referred to in this research as a “model explorer”. For example, Summers et al. (2015) developed the Landscape Futures Analysis Tool, which communicated agricultural production, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity conservation implications of different land management decisions through a user interface for exploring management scenarios, maps, and data. Another effective communication technique involves the use of realistic visualizations that convey different environmental management and (or) community development scenarios to provide people with a strong impression of “potential futures” that could transpire if certain plans or strategies were implemented. Because of their realism, these tools can convey complex information in a salient manner to diverse groups and provide a vivid understanding of how one would react to the implementation of different planning decisions (Sheppard 2001; Newell and Canessa 2015; Newell et al. 2017a, 2017b). Previous research has found that visualizations show promise as effective tools for planning and stakeholder engagement, with studies that have demonstrated their application in climate adaptation planning (Sheppard et al. 2011), natural resource management (Lewis and Sheppard 2006), stakeholder engagement in land-use planning (Schroth et al. 2011), community development and residential expansion (Salter et al. 2009), urban green space planning (Grêt-Regamey et al. 2013), and local and regional development (Tress and Tress 2003). One of the reasons visualizations serve as effective tools for planning is because they connect with people’s sense of place (Newell and Canessa 2015, 2017; Newell et al. 2017a), and this allows users to engage with aspects of management and development plans that are difficult to convey though quantitative data or model outputs, such as impacts to viewsheds and changes to the character of a place (Newell et al. 2017b, 2018). The application of realistic visualizations may be beneficial in identifying and harmonizing the values of citizens and governments in urban planning initiatives, contributing to a robust local sense of community and place.

Although interactive interfaces and visualizations have exhibited promise as effective tools for participatory planning and community engagement, often they are developed only by researchers and (or) practitioners, whereas a truly participatory planning process would involve broader community involvement and values in the design of models and scenarios (Prell et al. 2007; Woodward et al. 2008; Amer et al. 2013). Such involvement would lead to models and communication tools that reflect a range of different concerns, needs, and interests associated with different management options and community development pathways. Clark et al. (2016) discussed how the production of usable knowledge through technology-based tools has been constrained by one-directional, expert-driven process, whereas collaborative, iterative approaches that result in co-production are more effective for strengthening relationships between knowledge-making and decision-making. A critical (but challenging) aspect of effective participatory scenario planning is to develop and improve processes for translating of stakeholder values, narratives, and visions into information that can be captured in models and other planning tools (Scolobig and Lilliestam 2016). In addition, it is important to recognize that a variety of different types of planning and engagement tools exist, each with their own limitations, and they cannot simply be substituted for one another (Lewis and Sheppard 2006). When developing and evaluating the utility and effectiveness of digital tools, McNamara and Kirakowski (2006) recommended considering their functionality, meaning “what does the product do?” (p. 26); in the case planning tools such as maps, visualizations, and data, these tools have different functions that allow people engage in planning information and exercises in different ways (Newell et al. 2017b). It is, therefore, important to understand how these tools can be used in a complementary fashion to optimize their potential for supporting planning processes. Ultimately, although advancements have been made in research on participatory planning and community engagement tools, knowledge gaps still exist, particularly in terms of how to develop appropriate tools based on broad community interests and objectives and how to effectively use them in a complementary manner.

This study develops and examines two tools designed to support participation and engagement in community planning, that is, an interactive model explorer and realistic visualizations. The study is part of a larger project, “Spaces, Places and Possibilities”, which involves three phases: (i) designing community scenarios and model based on local government and stakeholder input; (ii) using the model to calculate/estimate possible social, economic, and environmental outcomes of the scenarios; and (iii) creating tools for communicating the model and scenarios to diverse community members and the broader public. This paper focuses on the third research phase, and it discusses the development of the model explorer and visualizations, as well as their assessment through focus group and open house activities. The other research phases are documented in publications (Newell and Picketts 2020b; Newell et al. 2020), project reports (Newell and Picketts 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a), and on the project webpage: crcresearch.org/spaces-places-and-possibilities.

This research confirmed that different tools for community planning and public engagement should not necessarily be regarded as substitutes for one another, as such tools can benefit from complementary strengths. Although some research participants indicated a stronger preference for a particular tool, overall, it was recognized the tools serve different purposes. The visualizations were described by participants as particularly useful for providing a “sense” or “feeling” of what certain scenarios would be like if implemented in the real world. This is consistent with other research; for example, a participant in Lewis and Sheppard’s (2006) study on visualizations for natural resource planning scenarios noted that this type of tool can provide “a way better understanding [that is] almost a feeling” (p. 308). Such references to “sensing” and “feeling” align with theories posited by Newell and Canessa (2015), who argued that visualizations are effective tools for participatory planning and community engagement because of their ability to connect with people’s sense of place. Realistic visualizations transform abstract data into meaningful information concerning familiar real-world places (Jude et al. 2007; Sheppard et al. 2011; Lewis et al. 2012), and the ways people interact with and react to management and (or) development scenarios depicted through visualizations are reflective of the meanings, values, beliefs, and (or) feelings people associate with these places (Newell and Canessa 2017; Newell et al. 2017b). Albeit useful place-based tools, visualizations in this study were not effective for presenting specific details and data on community development scenarios; however, the model explorer was useful in this regard. Research participants provided an interesting description of the differences in how the tools communicate information to users, noting that the model explorer gave “objective” understandings of the scenarios whereas the visualizations were more “subjective” in terms of the information they conveyed and impressions they provided. These comments speak to the relative strengths and weaknesses of each tool, and the research findings suggest that using the tools in concert can be beneficial for providing multiple ways of understanding a community development proposal or plan.

Participants found that using the model explorer and visualizations together was useful for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the scenarios, with some noting that beginning with the explorer provided a strong understanding of the broader scenario implications depicted in the visualizations. Although the tools can be used in concert, participants also indicated a stronger integration of the tools would make them more effective. Previous research has explored integrating different types of information with scenario visualization tools; for example, Grêt-Regamey et al.’s (2013) visualization of the proposed Linear Park in Masdar City (Abu Dhabi, UAE) featured different vegetation scenarios, and these scenarios were presented with water consumption, shade cover, and habitat suitability indicators. As another example, Salter et al.’s (2009) visualization of housing density scenarios in the community of Bowen Island (British Columbia, Canada) included metrics on population, water, and energy consumption, and waste production. In these examples, there were relatively few indicators presented with the visualizations; whereas, the challenge for this research was to communicate the outcomes of a much more complex model. To meet this challenge, tool integration was attempted following the first focus group by incorporating a table of model outcomes and community-wide scenario maps. Participants in the open house event expressed that these were favourable features, which indicates that the refinements did somewhat contribute to better tool integration; however, some participants still expressed a desire for even stronger integration. Future research on the development of planning tools should continue to pursue this challenge and explore ways of harnessing increasingly sophisticated modelling, interactive media, and visualization technologies to create fully integrated tools that provide a single platform for examining potential planning options and community development directions.

Because different planning tools have complementary strengths, tool integration can be useful for overcoming weaknesses and limitations. The visualizations developed for this research are experienced from the first-person perspective, and Orland et al. (2001) describes these as “egocentric” tools that are well-suited for ground-level assessments related to decisions that affect smaller areas. This suggests that these types of visualization tools have scale limitations, meaning they may not serve as effective planning tools for larger areas (Newell et al. 2017b). Such scale issues were observed in this research. In the focus group, the community-wide impacts of the different scenarios were not immediately clear to some participants when using the tools to examine scenarios on neighbourhood levels, which created confusion as to why (for example) certain environmental indicators exhibited greater impacts with low-density development. Community-wide maps were incorporated into the visualization tool following the focus group, and in the subsequent open house event, such confusions related to scale were not expressed. This is not to say that the visualization tool refinements had effectively “resolved” all issues associated with scale, but regardless, this research has illustrated a need for recognizing limitations of planning tools and potential ways of overcoming these limitations through the integration of different tool features.

Research participants commented on how the model explorer and visualization tools were useful for communicating trade-offs between the different scenarios. Trade-offs are important to identify and understand when considering how certain community development plans and strategies may align or conflict with different social, economic, and environmental objectives (Raymond et al. 2017). Systems models are particularly useful for identifying trade-offs (Newell et al. 2018), and the model explorer was found to be useful in this regard. Furthermore, the complementary use of the model explorer and visualizations provided a much broader understanding of trade-offs than could be gained solely by examining the systems model through the explorer tool. Participants recognized the benefits of density that were communicated through the model explorer (e.g., local jobs, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, etc.), but some also found the high-density scenario to be too crowded and representing lower liveability and quality of life. This is an important finding because concepts like liveability and quality of life are significant to social sustainability, but are also elusive and difficult to define in a given local context (Dempsey et al. 2011; de Haan et al. 2014). This research has demonstrated that visualizations can prove a means for assessing how certain development options can affect these important yet vague aspects of community, and by using the model explorer and visualizations in concert, community members can gain understanding of these options in terms of both qualities that can be clearly defined through metrics and those that are based more on visceral reactions.

The model explorer and visualization tools can provide a cross-communication platform for citizens and their regional authorities. Municipal governments must address issues around access to essential services, environmental considerations, and infrastructural capacity in community planning; however, citizens may not be familiar with these governmental priorities that direct local and regional development. The tools presented in this study indicate great potential for identifying and harmonizing the values of public officials and their constituents in the development process. For example, some open house participants favoured the medium-density scenario, with comments expressing that it was an “acceptable” level. Such comments highlight a potential path for negotiating the demands of regional growth with local aesthetic and cultural preferences. In the case of Squamish, medium-density preferences align with some existing zoning measures and new neighbourhood developments within the community, and these tools can provide a means for co-discovering this alignment between local planning priorities and community values. Moreover, iterative processes, such as those employed in this study, can allow these overlaps to be recognized proactively, rather than risk contentious situations and ineffective attempts to retroactively gain buy-in following implementation of development plans.

The results of this study concur with a growing body of literature that speaks to the endorsement of democratized municipal planning. As a product of the iterative approach undertaken to produce the visualizations, stakeholder feedback became imperative to the imagining of potential futures for the community. In this way, the study embraced the spirit of community-based research (Hacker et al. 2012) and participatory planning (Jentoft and Chuenpagdee 2009; Ling et al. 2009), as it incorporated community values and pursued goals of community members. The purpose of this work was to create tools that allow community members to understand how certain development directions can align or conflict with their social, economic, and environmental objectives, as opposed to arguing for a particular scenario or development option.

By fostering spaces for ideological dialogue, stakeholders may work to address disconnects between citizens and representatives. The exploration and feedback cycles used in this study promote collaborative planning strategies, which may contribute to citizens’ sense of belonging within rapidly changing communities. Moreover, exploration into “democratized” planning reveals an increased sense of passion, community investment, and civic responsibility within community members (Munthe-Kaas and Hoffmann 2016; Guimarães 2019). In practicing democratized planning, governments may work toward addressing local concerns around citizen power (or lack thereof). Such practices serve as an admission of privileged authority and power in constructing society, while empowering local actors and invigorating communities with a sense of mutualism between citizen and government (Munthe-Kaas and Hoffmann 2016). The approach taken in this study involved space for dialogue and co-production of knowledge, and such research approaches can lead to new platforms for mobilizing the values of a democratized planning process.

Effectively communicating complex information is a challenging task, and focus group participants indicated that tools for communicating model outcomes should clearly illustrate the major differences between the scenarios to convey social, economic, and environmental benefits and trade-offs. Participants elaborated on this point, explaining that such highlighting should not simply consist of presenting a comprehensive list of model outcomes; rather, it should involve curating and highlighting key indicators. However, specifically highlighting certain indicators in these tools can lead users of the tools to believe that there is a “correct scenario”. Ultimately, the tools were equipped with summary tables of the model outcomes and links to Squamish Community Performance Indicators (District of Squamish 2019), but these functions do not fully respond to the focus group recommendation of a curated list of model outcomes and key scenario differences. Findings from the open house event were encouraging in terms of the potential the tools have for supporting participatory planning, as participants explicitly expressed that the tools can help the community members form opinions on the local development scenarios based on their (and their community’s) values. However, the tension between the need for clearly communicating complexity (i.e., highlighting particular scenario differences) and the importance of respecting local values and agency (i.e., avoiding leading stakeholder opinions) is still a challenge that deserves further research attention.

In addition to being useful for communication and stakeholder engagement, the visualizations also produced important insights simply through the process of developing the tool. Models used to support urban planning and land-use decisions often employ spatial methods that operate at resolutions coarser than the household level, such as district, regions, or blocks (e.g., Liu and Phinn 2003; Yang and Lo 2003; Mikovits et al. 2018; Marull et al. 2019). Albeit practical, modelling at this resolution can obscure important considerations for scenarios when these development options are actually implemented in a community. For example, this research modelled development and density in terms of how many units could fit within different land parcels, and although this approach was useful for the modelling exercise, dwelling units had to be reduced in the visualizations for the medium-density scenario to provide sufficient space for road and path access. This was not the case for the high-density scenario, which thusly demonstrated that density objectives are achieved when pursuing high-density building forms but could be more challenging with the medium-density form. In addition, the visualization development process also elucidated nonspatial considerations associated with the scenarios; for example, focus group participants commented that improvements to infrastructure such as street lights would occur with higher density and these had not been effectively captured in the visualizations. Visualizing a scenario with a high degree of realism requires visualization developers to think about aspects of community development that could be overlooked when using other (less visually detailed) tools such as models and maps (Newell et al. 2017b). For such reasons, the visualization development process can be just as useful for supporting planning as is actually employing the tools in participatory planning and community engagement practices.

The tools developed in this research demonstrate promise for supporting participatory planning due to their ability to communicate complex model outputs to diverse stakeholders and audiences, and this is encouraging in terms of closing the implementation gap between community modelling efforts and local action. However, it is important to recognize that challenges still remain around the implementation gap, particularly in terms of the limitations around users further developing the tools and exploring new scenarios. Similar to other research on planning tools (e.g., Salter et al. 2009; Shaw et al. 2009; Schroth et al. 2011), the model explorer and visualizations were developed by researchers, and although community members were informed on how to use the tools, the project ultimately did not involve building local expertise and capacity for further developing them. Future research can address the implementation challenge in one of two ways. One approach would be to develop a platform that allows for scenario building (i.e., in addition to scenario exploration). This could be a viable avenue for future research in this area, as the visualizations were developed using a game engine and other researchers have used games such as SimCity to investigate the utility in urban planning education (e.g., Gaber 2007; Terzano and Morckel 2017). However, it is important to recognize that games like SimCity were not developed as planning tools, and researchers caution that they do not adequately capture the complexities involved in urban design and community development (Minnery and Searle 2014).

Another approach for further closing the implementation gap would be to incorporate training components into research efforts. The visualization development methods used in this research employed programs that either have free versions (i.e., Unity, SketchUp) or could be replaced with similar, open source alternatives (i.e., QGIS instead of ArcGIS, GIMP instead of Photoshop); this was regarded by the researchers to be important as it increases access and ability for groups with limited budgets (e.g., NGOs) to employ the visualization techniques. In addition, Newell et al. (2017a, 2017b) documented the visualization process in detail in open access journals with the hope that this would encourage the adoption and use of these techniques. However, the likelihood of a municipal government or community groups employing the visualization techniques based on access to software and documentation alone is low, and future research could address this issue by also incorporating training sessions on how to use the software and conduct the workflow. Such research could involve three steps: (i) co-developing models and visualization tools, as done in this study, (ii) training government and (or) community members on how to further develop the tools, and (iii) conducting a longitudinal study to investigate whether government and community groups have continued to use/develop the tools (and why or why not).

The study has revealed an opportunity for what can be understood as a bespoke approach to urban design, in that model explorer and visualizations tools can be developed and employed in concert for tailoring community development based on creative collaboration and individual empowerment. In doing so, however, consideration must be given to the role of the researcher in manifesting the results of their study through creation of the tools. Many of the principles upheld by democratized planning should be practiced in planning research, such as done in this study. These include an acknowledgment of privilege and power in the shaping of opinion and imagination, which are able to translate tangibly should any research findings contribute to the outcomes of community development (Munthe-Kaas and Hoffmann 2016). Similarly, in developing selection criteria for research participants, the researcher ultimately holds the authority to determine which voices are represented in the final product. Thus, even when using community-based methods and incorporating participant feedback in iterative studies, the inherent bias of researchers will inevitably be represented in some component of the project, which in the case of action research, will influence the products/outcomes. This research developed tools for participatory planning, and thus biases influence the content and user experience of these tools. Discovering new and better ways of minimizing these biases and maximizing inclusivity will be an ongoing research challenge in the field community planning and engagement.

A significant challenge (and source of bias) that exists when developing visualizations as planning tool relates to the designer choices involved in modelling the virtual environment and visual elements. Bresciani and Eppler (2008) noted that such designer-induced problems include misleading visuals and hiding/obscuring certain elements; these problems can affect the ability visualizations have as tools for supporting effective decision-making. To address such challenges, Sheppard (2001) and Lewis et al. (2012) outlined codes of ethics for visualization developers and explained that it is important for these representations to be made accurate as possible in terms of their depictions of future environmental conditions. However, as stated by Appleton et al. (2002), “reality will always exceed our ability to simulate it” (p. 147), and in many cases, misrepresentations and omissions by visualization developers are unintentional, but problematic nonetheless. Lewis et al. (2012) acknowledged these issues; however, they also noted that the issues should not prevent progress in visualization research and practice, instead advocating for continual improvement and transparency on the shortcomings of the visualization tools. In the case of this research, increased transparency on the visualizations’ shortcomings (and obscured aspects of scenarios) was attempted by including stakeholder critiques of the visualizations in pop-up windows. However, the open house participants did not provide detailed comments on whether this feature improved the visualization tool, and more research is needed to assess whether this was an effective approach for increasing transparency.

In some cases, designer-induced issues can occur due uncertainty around particular conditions. For example, in this study, predicting the specific design (e.g., colour, style, etc.) of the buildings in future development scenarios was not possible, thusly compromising the accuracy of the representation. Some researchers suggest using a combination of realistic and abstract elements (e.g., Chassin et al. 2019), which would address the design uncertainty issues; however, such an approach was not taken in this study for multiple reasons. As discussed above, the research aimed to develop a tool that connects with people’s sense of place. A feeling of being “present” within a virtual environment supports this ability (Newell and Canessa 2015), and some visualization research has found that a lack of realism can distract from a sense of presence (Hayek et al. 2016). In addition, the scenarios explored in this research involved more than just building construction; they included multiple aspects of community development, such as parks, paths, traffic, gardens, etc. Modelling all these added/changed elements as abstract shapes would greatly reduce the realism of the representation (perhaps to the point of not being a relatable environment), and modelling only some as abstract would being misleading in that it would suggest that certain elements (i.e., the realistic models) have a confirmed design. Finally, Lovett et al. (2015) explained that realism in visualizations can contribute significantly to diverse users’ ability comprehend a scene. Technical trade-offs occur with realism relating to processing and rendering time (Appleton et al. 2002; Lovett et al. 2015); however, these have reduced (and continue to reduce) significantly with technological advancements. As researchers and practitioners take advantage of these technological advancements, a key research question will be: how do we embrace and harness these opportunities, while fully being transparent about the uncertainties and shortcomings of representations of “potential futures” given through realistic visualizations?

This research project employed a participatory approach for creating planning tools, and it iteratively developed the tools based on feedback of local government and community stakeholders (Newell and Picketts 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b). Such an approach is particularly useful for the development of both integrated models and visualizations. Developing a comprehensive model to support integrated planning is a challenging task because it requires capturing and overwhelming level of complexity (Sperling and Berke 2017). Similarly, developing realistic visualizations based on these systems model presents the challenge of capturing a great degree of detail (Appleton et al. 2002). However, by employing a participatory approach, models (Newell and Picketts 2018; Newell et al. 2020) and visualizations (Newell et al. 2017a) can be developed in a manner that is both reasonable in scope and relevant to a community’s planning needs. Environmental, social, cultural, and economic characteristics differ from place-to-place and community-to-community; thus, no “one-size-fits-all” approach to sustainable community development exists (Dale et al. 2018), and accordingly, the model and visualizations were developed in this research to be specific to the place-based characteristics and challenges of the community of Squamish. However, the approach and process documented in this paper can be applied to other communities, and other research and modelling/visualization exercises could involve similar participatory approaches for co-developing planning tools in collaboration with the stakeholders and community members that will use the tools.

In many cases, it can be impractical to address all community recommendations when developing planning tools; however, advancements in technologies for developing interactive media have provided interesting opportunities for acknowledging and incorporating feedback in innovative ways with minimal temporal and financial costs. In this research, the visualization tool was refined after the focus group to include pop-up windows that list concerns and critiques given by focus group participants on the visualizations and scenarios. Through this feature, community thoughts and feedback were made available to future visualization users with relatively modest changes to the tool, thereby providing users with a more complete understanding of the scenarios and their implications with minimal effort on the part of the tool developers.

Community participation is an essential component of effective local planning (Ling et al. 2009), and to this end, this study explored the development and use of tools for supporting participatory planning and community engagement. This research process has resulted in a promising, novel, and synergetic methodology of urban design that merges technological advancements with an appreciation for humanized and locally oriented governing practices. The model explorer and visualization tools created through this research differ significantly in terms of their form and the types of information each communicates, and these differences provided interesting opportunities for comparing their strengths and weaknesses. However, the purpose of this comparison was not to investigate whether one tool was more effective than the other; rather, the research elucidated how complementary strengths can be harnessed when employing these tools in concert. Moreover, the research indicated that integration of different types of tools could further harness their respective strengths, and future research should take advantage of opportunities for tool integration offered by advancements in interactive media technologies. Such research will lead to tools that can comprehensively convey the implications of developing a community in a certain way to diverse stakeholders and community members, thereby effectively supporting integrated planning and sustainable community development.

We gratefully acknowledge the Banting Postdoctoral Fellowships Program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Partnership Engage Grants program (892-2018-3000) for its support of this research project. We would also like to acknowledge the District of Squamish and community members, who participated in this research effort.