Harvest has always loved cities and their potential to contribute to their citizens' quality of life. Good cities not only enhance health and well being, but also support strong communities that connect people and bring them together to create positive change.

It's this passion for cities, along with a background in city planning, that has led us to intentionally design a range of tools and features within The HiVE that specifically support place-based engagement. These tools are optimized for use in strategic planning, urban design, landscape architecture, infrastructure and other projects relating to the built environment.

Used the right way, these tools not only improve the way we communicate these types of projects, but also have the potential to involve citizens in the co-creation of our cities. After all, cities are built for people (or at least should be), so why shouldn't they be planned by them?

Here's our pick of some of our favorite tools in The HiVE's toolkit to use in city planning projects.

Webmap

In place-based projects, maps tell a story of a thousand words and are great for communicating information about cities in a compelling way. The Webmap tool lets you take your spatial data (i.e. data from your GIS or other open data sources) and turn it into interactive maps for the web.

These maps can be used to transmit important background information, helping you build awareness and capacity so you can collect more informed and considered feedback during your engagement.

One of the features of our mapping tools we love is the ability to view maps in 3-dimensions. This provides a more immersive and intuitive way for people to consume the information and understand the spatial context of a project.

Interactive map showing the subway lines of New York City. Hold the right mouse button while panning the map to view in 3-D, or click a feature to view more information.

Social Map

The only thing better than having great looking maps, is having great looking maps that people can collaboratively contribute to. The Social Map tool lets you crowd-source spatial feedback by getting people to pin their comments directly on the map. Other participants can view these public comments, or add their own to build a local picture of community sentiment, opinions and ideas.

It's a great tool for unlocking local knowledge, understanding where issues exist or identifying ideas and opportunities. It is best used during the early research phase of a project to collect insights, before proposals are drafted.

Fund It

Fund It is a versatile participatory budgeting or funding tool that can be used to involve people in making decisions. Using the Fund It tool, participants are given a budget of either 'money' or 'points', and presented with a menu of items they can theoretically purchase.

They then select the items they would like to see funded, but can only do so within their allocated budget. This provides a tool for people to express preferences and understand the 'trade-offs' involved in the real-world decision-making process.

Fund It can be used at a number of places in the planning process, but can be especially useful in the visioning stage to understand what things people value most. We also love the idea of using it at the implementation stage to involve people in fleshing out the detail of broader planning frameworks.

For example, you have identified a location for a new playground and nominated a budget for its delivery, but why not get people involved in deciding what kinds of play equipment and street furniture they would like to see there?

This way, you not only involve them in the process, but instill a sense of ownership and local pride because they were responsible for shaping the outcome.

HotSpot

When it comes time to communicate planning and design proposals, the HotSpot tool provides a perfect opportunity to do so, in a way that is both interesting and interactive. This tool lets you take a background image (e.g. streetscape photographs, concept drawings, maps, etc.) and add interactive annotations that detail the proposal and can be explored by the user.

Rather than having dozens of leader lines with illegible descriptions, HotSpot helps you present information in a digital-first format, breaking free from the long-winded PDF documents that are typically created but rarely read. It also helps you get your hard work noticed (and hopefully the attention it deserves).

Bringing a photomontage of a future streetscape to life using the Hotspot tool. Credit: Page

VR View and Swipe

One of the biggest challenges in built environment projects is communicating physical change in a way that allows people to easily visualize the future of a place. Both VR View and Swipe help you achieve this goal in highly visual and interactive ways that words alone cannot match.

VR View lets you take a 360 degree static photograph or drawing (such as a 3D render) and enables users to explore the virtual environment on their device. When using a mobile device, the user's physical movements will pan around the scene and a 'Virtual Reality' mode can be enabled and used with an affordable VR headset like Google Cardboard to create an immersive experience.

360 image of Peter McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) using VR View. View on a mobile device to pan the scene when you move your phone, or even enter into VR mode for use with compatible VR headsets. Credit Dennis Slyvester Hurd.

Swipe provides a simple but powerful technique for communicating physical changes to the built environment. It allows you to select a 'before' and 'after' image and combine them in a way that lets the user move or 'slide' between the images to compare changes.

Before and after of a streetscape in Budapest, Hungary using the Swipe tool. Credit: The Architects Newspaper.

Both of these tools are effective once planning proposals have been drafted, and are useful to communicate concepts and seek community input that helps you refine them. It's ideal for urban design or landscape projects which present detailed visions of physical space, but can also be used in high-level strategic planning processes to demonstrate change at a macro level.

Gather and Visioner

The Gather and Visioner tools provide a digital way to crowdsource people's ideas for the future of a place, and aggregate them into one consolidated place. Visioner provides a short, sharp way to collect ideas (think virtual post-it notes) while Gather provides a more long-format, multi-media approach to collecting input.

You can also use these tools effectively to better understand place and how it is used and valued by people, by having them share their stories and experiences about a place.

Ideas collection for a community visioning process using the Visioner tool.

Other tools

The HiVE is packed with many other tools suitable for use in city planning projects (visit the demo site to see more). Other premium tools like PolicyScape and PlaceStory can expand your digital engagement capabilities even further.