Participatory Comprehensive Plan based on Virtual Geographical Environment

Comprehensive plan, as a participatory plan-making process, would involve a genuine and efficient communication between planners, citizens, decision makers and other professionals. In this system, many new technologies have been employed. This paper, introduces Virtual Geographical Environment (VGE) into this field tentatively. VGE, set up to simulate and then resolve the geometrical and physical modeling of the real world in cyberspace, makes Web-based 3D visualization feasible. Through Internet, distributed users can participate in the VGE, and browse, analyze as well as discuss same geo-referenced phenomena and process at the same time. Based on this idea, this paper first reviews the current techniques applied to public participation, especially some information and communication technologies, such as geographical information system (GIS), virtual reality (VR), and Internet, then systematically examines the salient problems in current public participation, and lastly, preliminarily presents the methodology of the solution based on VGE.