This project in Milan was reported at YII 2020, which uses CUBE as a traffic modeling platform.
Has OCP been used with CUBE to create a transport-aware context model anywhere?
Milan is an interesting test bed for this kind of collaboration:
"for the requalification of the seven disused railway yards (Farini, Porta Romana, Porta Genova, Greco-Breda, Lambrate, Rogoredo, San Cristoforo), which overall cover an area of 1,250,000 square metres, of which about 200,000 will continue to be used for railway functions. This is the largest urban regeneration plan that will affect Milan in the next 20 years, one of the largest territory restitching and enhancement projects in Italy and in Europe."
It's pretty difficult to set up these models which takes time and specialised software. Having seven sites should help with ths investment costs? CUBE to provide the simulation code while OCP provides the web-based display platform?
And what happens after the model for the traffic network around the site is set up?
Always found OCP to be a display tool rather than a proper planning tool. Instead of just modeling the building blocks, OCP could provide some tools to model streets? CUBE and ConceptStation tools to generate the roadways and parking impacts? A tool to place transit nodes like bus stops that can be placed in OCP but contain all the 'plumbing' for the underlying CUBE network?
A lot of powerful voices are pushing for more pedestrianisation, but pushing cars out means other streets just get busier. Very popular urban design move, but often with unintended side effects.
Even without the pedestrianisation question, all those online public consultation models are a bit misleading if the traffic isn't co-modeled. The urban environment or 'places' presented would be hugely different with increased traffic, noise and air polution.
Hi Dominic,
thanks for a very interesting post. Yes, we have imported CUBE data into OCP for visualization and sharing purposes. You're right, OCP is a display/share/engagement tool primarily, relying on specialised engineering/analysis applications for the heavy lifting in creating analyses.
Are you involved in the Milan project?
Hi Johan,
No, not currently. Very indirectly involved in the Farini competition last year. I suggested a mini airport on the site... which didn't go down very well :-)
As you probably already know, the amount and type of info provided to the competitors was very 'static' in nature.
I don't think that there was a requirement to provide any 'engineered' traffic analysis to support the designs.
The result is the usual architectural beauty pageant. Which means the usual: the implementation will differ quite a bit from the concept... or there will be a lot of technical compromises made for political reasons.
I note that the six finalists have been announced for Porta Romana, which includes Systematica. Hopefully, they will be able to bring in some traffic modeling into the design. The usual situation where the traffic engineering aspects are checked after the architectural layout and massing is done... just to check that the minimum thresholds are met is not a great way of doing things, eventhough it does make it easier for the traffic engineers.
Ideally, the competition organisers would commision a traffic model of the surroundng area and give the competing teams access via the web. The transport nodes would be provided as 'lego'-style blocks for the teams to play with... along the lines of Futureon's very impressive frontend design tools.
Instead of tracking how much oil is being pumped, the underlying 'plumbing' would track pedestrian or car traffic flows. This would give the competitors some feedback on congestion / service, air and noise pollution levels... as they are designing... not after.