Urban Menus

URBAN MENUS instrument

URBAN MENUS is a web-based tool, with which future visions of e.g., city quarter can be displayed with a reasonable effort in a multidimensional 3D plus impact and discussed holistically.
  • 3D visualization: for a better understanding of urban spaces from multiple points of view and different configuration options.
  • Integral impact assessment: indicators and algorithms to show how planning affects happiness, safety, innovation, profitability, and circularity.
  • Participation: to facilitate consensus among various stakeholders, users can share and discuss their favourite planning versions.
  • Change of perspective: by learning how to integrate the tool into participative workshops and/or online participation, planning processes are optimized and new methodologies to identify shared visions are developed.

URBAN MENUS process

URBAN MENUS processes e.g., a city quarter development can also happen online: A new digital assisted way for a shared future development, within which conflicts can be solved and an even greater potential can be created.

Our 3D tool and training programs are best applied in an early phase of a project by optimally balancing architectural features and comprehensive impact assessment. While traditional tools are too focused on in-depth planning or detailed sketches addressing only regional or specific impact assessments, our tool process allows for a discussion of essential topics taking into account architectural and spatial planning parameters.

By adopting URBAN MENUS, all relevant stakeholders can be involved from the beginning of the process, enabling negotiations and consensus-building. Therefore, risks, challenges, and opportunities can be identified prior to decision-making.

As a result, all stakeholders are on the winning side; decisions and agreements are accepted and cherished by the community.

URBAN MENUS impact

URBAN MENUS shows not only a sense of space of e.g., a city quarter, but also – in the sense of sustainability goals of the UN or the green deals of the EU – the characteristics in terms of luck, safety, stability, innovation, and circular economy.

The tool allows the user to visualize a city sector from different perspectives and to experience a variety of urban development options by changing ecology, urbanity, and density levels.

Through integrated impact analysis, URBAN MENUS generate an understanding of effects and enable transparent decision-making processes.

The impact is measured by a multi-criteria approach targeted at today’s prevailing communal objectives. In total more than a hundred detailed parameters are taken into account.

Based on a holistic approach, users can efficiently obtain impact information concerning their different urban visions. Spider and sphere diagrams, together with an SDG assessment, allow all stakeholders involved to understand the effects and derive a consensus on a clear and balanced future scenario. The aim is to create urban spaces that work – for inhabitants and all other users.

The approach has a generic structure that allows flexible extensions for new collective developments. New parameters and further transitive impact assessments can be added dynamically.

URBAN MENUS users

URBAN MENUS is useful in a lot of cases: city quarter development, masterplans, visions, implementation strategies…. Every representative will be brought to an integral implementation level and will be supported consensus oriented.
  • Smart developers & investors can decide with certainty among different possible scenarios through a vivid, impact-focused, understandable but profound presentation of alternatives.
  • Smart city promoters can initiate new synergies between different stakeholders, acknowledging the added value of interdisciplinarity.
  • Think tanks & decision-makers on all governmental levels can discuss, analyse, and reassure the feasibility of their visions without the need for detailed building plans.
  • Research & education can integrate the holistic tool into their urban planning methodologies and projects.
  • Urban & regional planners can assess impacts and involve inhabitants and stakeholders actively and effectively to reassure a development.
  • Citizens can express their opinion and actively participate based on personal impact preferences.

URBAN MENUS workflow example

URBAN MENUS can accompany you along the development of e.g., your city quarter. From the first hour until the final moments, ideas for improvement of the life quality will be brought into a feasible, future reality with the right actors.
  • Preliminary discussion with project managers: definition of the framework and goals to jointly shape an open process that should lead to sustainable solutions.
  • Think Tank Meeting: analysis of the requirements and wishes of the different stakeholders, the conception of scenarios, and impact criteria preferences.
  • Casting Visions: definition of scenarios for the plot by integrating them into the URBAN MENUS 3D-tool.
  • Stakeholder workshop for decision-making: walk through a variety of scenarios to visualize and switch between possible future developments, discussion of impacts, finding consensus in a joint vision.
  • Concrete planning: target-oriented and cost-efficient planning based on the joint vision.

URBAN MENUS Dismiss