A Review of Current GIS and Similar Software for City Design

Abstract

With an ever-increasing proportion of humanity residing in cities, their design is becoming inextricably linked with human flourishing. Both GIS data and other emerging tools promise opportunities for development in this field, with scope for augmenting the human decision-making process. While there has been a recent proliferation of such tools, a more detailed comparison of their requirements and functionalities is needed to help industry and public-sector decision makers ascertain the best tool for their specific workflows. This paper evaluates a range of tools from established GIS applications, rapid site analysis tools, and land use planning software, to more novel methods emerging from academic research, interoperability platforms, and the videogame industry. Each was tested through implementation of its respective functions in typical industry scenarios according to a set of characteristics derived from ISO 25000 metrics and relevant literature, enabling assessment and comparison of their use cases.

The research concludes that while the existing established tools fulfill their individual intended purpose, the potential of the surveyed novel methods has not yet been adequately explored in the context of land use planning. A new approach is needed to take full advantage of workflows made possible by the potential of recent developments in computational city design through academic research, interoperability platforms, and the videogame industry. Development of this approach forms further research, which is to be informed by the useful functionality detailed in this paper.