[20] - Walkable Cities Designed Programatically

A 3d Representation of Boston's topography
The proccessed paths of Iowa City
Black and white representation of topographic data around Iowa City
A zoomed out topographic landscape of the area around Iowa City
The drawing asset of the old capital building in Iowa City
A angled profile of the 3d representation of Iowa City with each layer being differently colored

Inspiration

We were inspired by a rise in global climate change, American car-centric city designs, and a love for topographic data visualization!

What it does

The various programs of this project take in topographic data from national maps, and process them into visual components. Then through the use of the Prim's algorithm we draw paths to and from various buildings so they are all within walking distance.

How we built it

This project was built largely based around python for data processing, Matlab to visualize the data and Unity to put it all together.

Challenges we ran into

While working on this project the entire team ran into several problems with Unity that nearly lead to the project becoming unfeasible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of the drawings that we use as assets, the topographic data visualization, and how the end product turned out.

What we learned

We learned many things while working on this project. We all became much more familiar with Matlab and Unity as well as how you work with topographic data successfully.

What's next for Walkable Cities Designed Programmatically

The next step for our project would be for city planning officials to more seriously consider the topic of walkable cities and their benefits for everyone involved. Thus, showing our program to as many people as possible.