ARS SCIENTIA : RE-IMAGING L.A.

We’re in a little computer warren at the UCLA department of architecture and urban design, taking a flight down Pico, zooming over the boulevard, buzzing the buses and the homes and the seedy liquor store and . . . jeez, let’s trash the boozery and put up, oh, an art gallery. With a click or two of our mouse, the liquor store is gone, the gallery is in, and on we fly, cleaning up the neighborhood as we go, putting up new buildings, planting trees--even watching them mature--digitally.

Welcome to the future of city planning. Using software adapted from military flight simulators and virtual reality technology, students and staff here have developed the City Simulator--a computer program that displays and manipulates images of Los Angeles, as it is and as it could be.

The program allows users to walk, drive or fly through surrealistically realistic surroundings, exploring just about every cranny of the neighborhood--and then improving it. On a more practical level, they can explore a proposed development to see precisely what planners have in mind. “We’re already using the program to help envision redevelopment in the Pico-Union district and the area around the Wilshire and Vermont subway station,” says Bill Jepson, the school’s director of computing services.

“It’s a tremendous tool,” says City Councilman Mike Hernandez, whose district includes Pico-Union and who championed a $175,000 city grant for the UCLA project. “Allowing the community to be part of the planning process will help us understand their needs and aid them in accepting the changes that must be made to these neighborhoods.”

So far, though, the City Simulator has been used mainly by the academics and officials involved in various redevelopment projects. But in the future--a presumably more wired future, that is--Los Angeles residents could use a personal computer or interactive television to take a 3-D, full-motion tour of their once and future neighborhood. Says Jepson: “We can show people exactly how a development would look from their own front porch.”