Program > Introduction to computed visibilities and Conceptual foundations

Linking landscape perception and planning regulation

by Claudia Cassatella (Politecnico di Torino, Italy)

The protection of landscape scenery dates back more than a century in Western Countries. The control of view cones is the most common tool. While the methods for analysing and assessing the views have been continuously improved, the related regulatory measures are still quite rough. A review of examples from Europe, US and Asia gives arguments for discussing the relation among visibility analysis and its actual use in the spatial planning field.

The aim of this lecture is to critically discuss limits and potential of visibility analysis, when related to public policies, such as urban planning or heritage preservation. The ever-growing possibility of controlling spatial features and of foreseeing spatial transformations can improve decision making processes. Nevertheless, existing techniques are often expert-based, as a consequence, participatory approaches must be introduced for ensuring a better representation of people’s perception. Some examples will be proposed, and an open discussion will be structured for stimulating ideas.

Course plan

• Introduction. Why do we care for vistas? Why should we? The protection of landscape scenery in public policies, the heritage-based approach. Some basic but ambiguous concepts: landscape, scenery, perception, as they are intended in the field of spatial policies and planning.

• International review on methods for protecting and managing scenic vistas and features. Examples from Europe, America and Asia of legislative and planning tools; levels ad scales of application; guidelines and assessment procedures; regulative frameworks. The role of visual analysis and the emerging role of GIS-based techniques.

  • Discussion: some limits and potential of existing techniques, with reference to the control of urban landscape transformation. Who does the “point of view” represent? A top-down and expert-based approach? Selective and elitist, or democratic and inclusive?

• Focus on an Italian experience of landscape planning. The Piedmont Region’s Guidelines for the analysis, protection and enhancement of the scenic character of landscape: methodology, applications at landscape scale and in urban context, applications via participative processes.

  • Discussion: How to improve or innovate existing systems of rules and decision-making, on the basis of the new techniques? To what extent visibility represent perception?

Title (coming soon)

By Jacques Teller (University of Liège, Belgium)

Themes for the lectures

• Urban landscapes: Challenges, Values and Reference documents (including a reference to the recent UNESCO Historic Urban Landscape Convention)
• Back to the roots: the urban form viewed as a dynamic process
• Towards an ecological approach of the visual perception of urban open spaces
• Isovist versus Spherical metrics: commonalities and differences
• From static (sky opening, regularity) to dynamic indicators (sky shape skeleton)
• The city as a system of places and open spaces

Introduction to 3D modeling

By Mickaël Brasebin (IGN, LaSTIG/COGIT)

During this thematic school, different methods based on computer analysis. In order to perform such methods, 3D digital city models are essential. Lots of different processes exist to produce such 3D city models. They are stored into different formats and different levels of quality. Thus, territories are generally not covered homogeneously by one type of very detailed 3D data and practitioners have to adapt their methods according to the availability of 3D in order to suit with the targeted analysis. The aim of this course is to present an introduction about the 3D city model and to offer a discussion about the influence of data quality on visual analysis.

Themes for the lectures

• Overview of 3D data acquisition and reconstruction (image, LIDAR, manual, ...)
• Methods to model 3D geometries (B-Rep, voxel, CSG, …)
• Standards to store 3D city models (CityGML, computer graphics standards, BIM, …)
• Data quality and influence for 3D analysis