Urban streetscapes need a redesign to meet pressing challenges associated with climate change and environmental degradation. This requires collaboration among a range of stakeholders. A user requirement study has specified what modelling and visualization tools are needed to support the co-creative design. These tools should facilitate cross‑disciplinary integration, without aiming for exhaustive detail.
Project Focus: Integrating Mobility and Nature-Based Solutions
The focus of the project «CoCoNet – Co-creative Cohabitation Network» is on restructuring urban streetscape at the district scale by combining mobility measures with nature-based solutions (NbS). Modelling and visualization tools integrating aspects of mobility, soundscape, microclimate, and ecological connectivity shall reveal spatial potentials for targeted transformation. To ensure that the tools meet the stakeholders’ needs for the intended purpose, the process of identifying the user requirements is of major importance.
Methodological Approach to User Requirement Specification
We followed an agile approach for user requirement specification (URS). A technical proof of concept was conducted by modelling indicators of ecological, microclimate, and noise aspects for initial scenarios. In addition, a combination of methods was used to reveal relevant information needed for co-creative design. This included a screening and a cross-city comparative analysis of urban development strategies of Vienna, Zurich, Munich, and Erfurt. The screening resulted in a set of common strategic objectives, design guidelines and indicators. Exchanges with local stakeholders of urban administrations, consulting companies, and initiatives in Vienna and Zurich fostered an understanding of local issues and challenges, and helped identify required information regarding the key aspects. These requirements were consolidated in an international stakeholder workshop.
Defining Target Users and Tool Specifications
The URS process transparently led to a systematic approach for scenarios and specifications for modelling and visualization tools as well as indicators for defined users. As targeted users, specialists of different disciplinary fields of urban administrations were identified. They predominantly require tools for communication and visualization when comparing alternatives, a frequent and often challenging task in practice. Including aspects from all fields was regarded as important for interdisciplinary discourse. However, indicators do not need to reflect the system in great depth. The indicators need to be relevant for all stakeholders and easy to interpret for disciplinary lay people. They shall help evaluate the effectiveness of scenarios more holistically. In this context, bringing often neglected topics such as ecological connectivity, microclimate, and acoustic environment into the discussion and highlighting synergies was seen valuable. The visualizations and indicators should inspire stakeholders and besides existing measures and concepts, hence, also include creative, non-standardized solutions.
From Sophisticated Metrics to Practical Application
Today, we can calculate very sophisticated indicators for various disciplinary aspects. A crucial insight from the URS was that for a set of meaningful indicators, first, it needs to be defined what information they should provide for the co-creative design context. An implementation situation with a specific task and content as a test bed, and gaining feedback from stakeholders, can help to develop useful tools that can effectively inform redesigns of urban streetscapes.
Ulrike Wissen Hayek has been Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Chair Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, since 2008, and Director of the Large-scale Virtualization and Modeling Laboratory (LVML) at ETH Zurich since 2023. Her research focuses on developing GIS-based audiovisual 3D landscape simulations for collaborative planning processes as well as for laboratory experiments.
Jonas Egeler is conducting his dissertation in the scope of the project CoCoNet at the Chair Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) at the ETH Zurich since 2025. He has a background in acoustic engineering and worked from 2021-2025 in the research and development team of Möhler + Partner Ingenieure GmbH, a consultancy specializing in noise control and environmental assessment. In his PhD he develops an integrated workflow that transforms predictive spatio-temporal models into immersive soundscapes.
