The Urban Simulation Services Group has delivered, or is under contract for delivery, on several recent programs:

Sunnyvale, California
California Department of Transportation
Redwood City, California
Cerritos, California
Vallejo, California
Las Vegas, Nevada

Sunnyvale, California
The city of Sunnyvale worked with MultiGen-Paradigm to produce this visualization of downtown Sunnyvale. The purpose of the simulation was to enable the city's citizens to better understand the spatial and visual impacts of a proposed renovated City Center featuring a people-friendly open space and new train station design. The urban redevelopment is intended to create an open, family oriented atmosphere that will attract citizenry to the downtown area. Representing two man-months of effort (including source data gathering), the scene was created with MultiGen-Paradigm's Creator scene building tools, and run on MultiGen-Paradigm's Vega realtime scene rendering tools.

California Department of Transportation
MultiGen-Paradigm developed a visual model of a 2.5 mile section of Los Angeles' 710 Freeway to enable California Department of Transportation planners to understand the impact of development and retrofit work before construction begins. The visualization contains existing conditions for the freeway segment, as well as candidate beautification and retrofit elements. With a keyboard stroke, the new elements can be activated and inserted into the scene, thus enabling the planners to get immediate feedback of appearance, scale, and compatibility of candidate freeway improvements.

Redwood City, California
MultiGen-Paradigm used MultiGen Creator tools, ortho photographs, and digital camera snapshots of store fronts to create existing conditions of one square block of mixed commercial downtown businesses and their adjacent surroundings. Next, a model of the proposed redevelopment, spanning one square block of aging and low density businesses, was created using Creator and CAD data for the redevelopment infrastructure and architectural drawings for the redevelopment 3D detail. The redevelopment project consists of new high-density ground level businesses and a second level twenty-theater Cinema complex. The redevelopment model can be switched in/out of the scene with a keyboard stroke, showing how the new complex will fit into the existing surroundings. The simulation was used by the City Planning Department to present the redevelopment project to the City Council and citizenry at a standing room only open forum meeting. Both the City Council and the public quickly grasped how the redevelopment fit into the existing downtown infrastructure, and the model prompted many informed questions and comments from the Council and the public.

Cerritos, California
MultiGen-Paradigm generated a realtime 3D model of an expansion of the town library within the City Civic Center complex. At issue to the City was how to best accommodate the additional parking loads resulting from the expanded library. The city needed to decide quickly to balance the aesthetics of an above ground parking building (that would impact the surrounding residential neighborhood) against the additional cost of an underground facility. Both a two story and a one-story garage were modeled for consideration as well as a higher wall surrounding the Civic Center complex. At a public forum presentation of the simulation, the designs were viewed from a number of vantage points, including viewing from the second floor windows of the surrounding neighborhood homes. It was clear that the above ground design would seriously compromise the privacy of the adjacent houses alongside the library. The simulation helped the City to decide to build the underground garage.

Vallejo, California
The city is embarking on a redevelopment of their historic waterfront along the Napa River to address the needs of an expanding population, to invigorate the downtown business area, and to maintain the quality of life as provided by the open space of the river front area. MultiGen-Paradigm developed a city model covering a two-mile extent along the Napa River waterfront and extending one-half mile inland and encompassing the city center. The computer simulation includes several redevelopment alternatives of mixed use residential and businesses on the waterfront, a new hotel and athletic complex at the river's edge, a new performing arts complex in the city business area, and residential complexes at the city's northern and southern limits. The model is being used by city planners to weigh design considerations and will be presented to the public to help citizens understand different development scenarios for the waterfront before construction begins.

Las Vegas, Nevada
MultiGen-Paradigm imported ArcView GIS shape file data along with ortho-aerial photos to construct an approximately one-half square mile area business mall at the edge of the Nevada desert. The area is a rework of an old Union Pacific railroad property. MultiGen-Paradigm used its SiteBuilder 3D tool to automatically convert 2D shape file data to 3D elements (such as roads, sidewalks, building setbacks, tree placement etc), and buildings. The scene was imported into MultiGen Creator where architectural and site plan drawings were used to complete the scene detail. Las Vegas will use the simulation to finalize proposed details of the development area, obtain consensus with the City management, and to educate the public.

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