While the older neighborhoods included tree-lined streets and homes with porches, the newer developments included wide, tree-less streets that were dominated visually by garages and parked cars, and weren't well connected. One of the major issues in the code update was to limit sprawl and improve the quality of new development. Here's an aerial of the city for perspective. My Ellensburg reconnaissance included a citywide bicycle tour, occasional driving tours, and lots of Google Earth fly-throughs. EllensburgĬirculation & block patterns using the Ruler Tool I will use three recent project examples to share how I've used Google Earth in planning projects: (1) Ellensburg (WA) Land Use Code Update, (2) Boise (ID) Design Guidelines, and the (3) Bellevue (WA) Downtown Livability Initiative. However, there are many places and features that can't be seen from public spaces, including green roofs, internal courtyards, private landscapes, or roadless areas with challenging terrain. Of course, it's best to see places and examples in person. While I mostly use it to look at conditions and examples locally, it's just as easy to fly around the globe to examine international places and development examples. I use it to examine development patterns, street design, recent construction, or the context of a particular site or street. This can be a particular site, street, neighborhood, entire city, or geographic region. We want to investigate what's on the ground. Simple reconnaissance is the most obvious reason to use Google Earth. Hopefully there are a couple of useful takeaways. In this article, I'll share some of the ways in which I've used Google Earth (and Bing Maps) over time. They include better street-view images, 3D buildings and trees, and historical imagery, which I'll discuss more below. (Bing Maps are pretty useful too - with their aerial perspective views, which aren't offered on Google Earth.)Īnd Google Earth's capabilities just keep getting better, as new “goodies” are being added all the time. When curiosity beckons or specific research information is needed, you only need a few clicks on the mouse and keyboard and voila, you are flying overhead. As a planning and urban design consultant working for several communities throughout the Pacific Northwest at any given time, it's an incredible tool to have at your finger tips. Rarely a day goes by at the office now where I don't use Google Earth. Category: Tools for Planners, Guest Author
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |