This Scenario 3D screenshot is from a project in rural Killingly, Connecticut that Placeways has been helping with. It’s part of the broader, cross-discipline Borderlands Project and the associated Village Innovation Pilot that are working to preserve the unique assets of lands and towns along the Connecticut-Rhode Island border.

The particular location of this scene is called “Four Corners,” which—and this is the acid test—you would recognize if you’ve been there. I can make that claim because I asked, and people who live there knew it when they saw me “drive” down the street in the Scenario 3D Viewer. (Screenshots never seem to do the interactive 3D scene justice, but you get the idea.)

If you look closely you can see the scene starts with a pretty good (though not at all perfect) aerial photo draped on the ground (whose terrain came from contour lines). To that we added cars, utility poles, grass, trees, and extruded building footprints (those brown ones in the back). The cars point the right way because we used CommunityViz Scenario 360 to calculate the proper angle relative to the road centerline. We finished off with a few custom-made SketchUp models of the iconic sights: here you can see the tall Dunkin’ Donuts sign and historic Zip’s Diner in the background.

We certainly could have made a much more detailed and perfect-looking scene. For example that SUV in the intersection seems to be about six inches too high, and we could have replaced the brown extrusions with SketchUp buildings. If you get going on scenes like this, the list never ends: Shrubbery. Sidewalks. Pedestrians. Street signs. Etc., etc., etc.

In most cases, though, I think the trick is to do just enough. Granted, it’s fun to make 3D scenes. And sometimes the project calls for lots of fidelity and detail. But if you spend forever on every 3D scene, you’ll use up time and budget that probably could have been spent elsewhere.

The “just enough” test for existing conditions is that simple question I asked earlier: Would you recognize it if you’ve been there? If the audience can mentally place themselves in the scene with ease, making the connection between computer model and real world, then you pass the “just enough” test. You have sufficient context that when you start illustrating alternative scenarios and new proposals, people can picture them in place.

How much is “just enough” for illustrating the new proposals? I think the same rule applies. If, after looking at the computer model, you go visit the actual new construction for the first time and you recognize it easily, then the computer model was “enough.” If you design your work carefully, you might be surprised at how little modeling is required.

Damariscotta, Maine is a small New England town nestled along the coast and steeped in history and traditions. Old brick buildings line the main street; an ancient Native American oyster shell midden speaks to a long past of fishing; and in the fall, creatively decorated pumpkins line the streets as part of the annual Great Pumpkin Fest and Regatta.

But Damariscotta is looking to the future, as well, and as part of their planning they are using thoroughly modern tools including CommunityViz.

Recipients of a Heart and Soul Community Planning grant from the Orton Family Foundation, Damariscotta has embarked on a long-term planning process aimed at creating a vision, plans and actions to reinforce the qualities that make Damariscotta a great place to live. You can read more about it on Orton’s site and the project’s site.

A major focus of the project is what Orton calls “Heart and Soul,” or “those tangible and intangible elements that if lost would fundamentally change the character of [a] place.” In Damariscotta, an extensive outreach campaign drew out five broad values that residents share the most:

• living locally
• working locally
• sense of community
• where nature and culture meet
• access to town

If, for example, people here had to commute long distances to work, it just wouldn’t be Damariscotta, they essentially said.

The local consulting firm Spatial Alternatives, with some help from us here at Placeways, worked with the town to build a CommunityViz model that effectively scored plan alternatives on how well they would support each of the five values. Plans that had too little affordable housing, for example, scored poorly on “living locally,” while a dearth of jobs hurt the “working locally” score. The model was more complicated than this simplified description, but that’s the general idea.

Damariscotta Scenario Comparison

One of the best things about the model is that it isn’t a black box. Anyone can see how it’s built, and it’s easy to change. Better yet, the more subjective components are set up with CommunityViz slider bars so they’re easy to adjust during the course of a discussion.

There was a chance to try out the model “on the ground,” so to speak, during a design charrette that was held last month. While town residents met with planners by day and designers sketched ideas by night, CommunityViz was used to illustrate the effects different plans would have on the town’s character in years to come. How did it work? We’re not sure yet. Ask us in years to come!