Revealing Social Values by 3D City Visualization in City Transformations

Social sustainability is a widely used concept in urban planning research and practice. However, knowledge of spatial distributions of social values and aspects of social sustainability is required. Visualization of these distributions is also highly valuable, but challenging, and rarely attempted in sparsely populated urban environments in rural areas. This article presents a method that highlights social values in spatial models through 3D visualization, describes the methodology to generate the models, and discusses potential applications. The models were created using survey, building, infrastructure and demographic data for Gällivare, Sweden, a small city facing major transformation due to mining subsidence. It provides an example of how 3D models of important social sustainability indices can be designed to display citizens’ attitudes regarding their financial status, the built environment, social inclusion and welfare services. The models helped identify spatial variations in perceptions of the built environment that correlate ( inter alia ) with closeness to certain locations, gender and distances to public buildings. Potential uses of the model for supporting efforts by practitioners, researchers and citizens to visualize and understand social values in similar urban environments are discussed, together with ethical issues (particularly regarding degrees of anonymity) concerning its wider use for inclusive planning.