Understanding ecosystem services trade-offs with interactive procedural modeling for sustainable urban planning

Given the accelerating rate of urbanization worldwide, the sustainable provision of urban ecosystem services becomes increasingly important for the growing number of city dwellers. Attempts to increase a single ecosystem service however often lead to reduction or losses of others. For making sound decisions about sustainable urban development, knowledge and awareness of the interactions between ecosystem services are thus necessary. In this paper, we show how interactive rulers embedded in a 3D GIS-based procedural modeling environment can assist in making urban ecosystem services trade-offs explicit for sustainable urban planning. The interactive rulers are slider bars that offer stakeholders the possibility to explore trade-offs in ecosystem services reflected in different urban designs. The approach is illustrated in a case study in Abu Dhabi, Masdar City, a new city designed from scratch. An interactive 3D visualization approach links parametric shape grammars for the design of generative urban patterns and the reporting of urban ecosystem services. We show how various urban design scenarios can be generated in an interactive manner allowing a balance between the esthetics of the urban designs and a set of indicators describing the provision of relevant ecosystem services. With this approach, the space for actions and behavioral alternatives become explicit - a crucial step for sustainable urban planning which calls for innovative strategies to adapt to these uncertain and rapid changes. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.