Belgium: Democratising city planning

With almost five billion people living in cities worldwide, urbanisation challenges are multiplying, intensified by the complex interconnectivity of urban areas. Residents are an untapped resource for co-designing cities; they know their local neighbourhood better than anyone. Belgian company, Barco, led the Eureka ITEA Cluster project C³PO, to explore ways city planners and designers can consult citizens throughout the urban transformation process, giving them a voice in upcoming developments.

Barco mobilised a consortium of 21 Belgian, Finnish and Turkish organisations in C³PO. Together, the project partners developed a cloud-based platform enabling city planners to engage citizens in urban redevelopment, making smart city redesigns collaborative. The platform offers a virtual reality solution for city planning with 3D visualisation. Citizens can continuously view up-to-date plans, whilst city planners gain access to static and dynamic data, scenario simulations and tools for stakeholder communications.

The project was strengthened by the participation of the cities of Brussels, Kortrijk, Kouvola and Oulu, as well as the Municipality of Pendik in Istanbul, which served as test beds. Trials in Finland and Türkiye demonstrated the value of virtual reality, markerless augmented reality and 3D mock-ups for table-top urban planning and visualisation. Meanwhile, trials in Brussels focused on accessibility and acted as proof of concept for the co-design process and various C³PO tools and methods. Cooperation with Oulu continued after the project’s completion to develop augmented reality services for city planning.

Before the age of social networks, town planners would hire architects and builders for new developments and improvements and then consult their voters on the plans once drawn up and 3D visualised. Now citizens can be consulted very early on by using new technologies and making their feedback guide decisions.

Andy De Mets – Coordinator of External Research, Development and Innovation Programs at Barco

Beyond these outputs, C³PO spurred the development of new and enhanced smart city applications and products that project partners are now commercialising: Barco designed the world’s first professional collaborative virtual reality environments, marketed as Canvas and Caves; Studio Dott created a physical installation space for public administrations to host interactive discussions with citizens; Noesis developed a portal and semantic workflows for multidisciplinary city design; and Createlli supports co-creation projects between cities and stakeholders through a participation platform used across Europe for infrastructure, mobility and nature planning. These products have opened new revenue streams and market segments, significantly contributing to company growth.

Belgium holds a unique position in Eureka, with participation of two innovation agencies and one ministry who each hold independent competences for innovation policy and funding in their region: Innoviris (Brussels), SPW Recherche (Wallonia) and VLAIO (Flanders), and one federal agency (BELSPO). C³PO benefited from Innoviris and VLAIO funding within Eureka’s Cluster programme.

Thanks to C³PO, citizens can now enjoy better liveability and engagement in their cities, contribute to improving where they live and work and have continuous access to up-to-date city development plans they can influence. Cities, supported by enhanced data analysis procedures, benefit from optimised decision-making processes, mitigated urban development risks through superior planning and prediction and the ability to actively involve their citizens.