Visualizing the Past, Present, and Future of New York City’s 1964-5 World’s Fair Site Using 3D GIS and Procedural Modeling

Institution:

Cornell University

Principal Investigator:

Jennifer Minner, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator

Jeffrey Chusid

Additional authors in alphabetical order:

• Nico Azel
• Yanlei Feng
• Geslin George
• Xiao Shi
• Feiyang Sun
• Taru

Grant Number:

P14AP00278
June 18 2017

Executive Summary

The National Parks Service awarded faculty in Cornell University’s Department of City and Regional with a grant to explore the potential for 4D geographic information systems (GIS) modeling to support historic preservation professionals in the context of an important cultural landscape and municipal park. (The term 4D refers to 3D modeling plus the incorporation of the ability to visualize and analyze change over time.)

Flushing Meadows Corona Park, which is located in the Borough of Queens in New York City, was the site of our investigations. Over the years, steps have been taken to preserve and revitalize this important park. However, substantial questions remain about how best to steward the park’s historical assets and cultural landscapes. Its complexity and richness makes the park a particularly useful place to test the capabilities of 4D GIS technology to inform historic preservation and planning efforts. The particular software used by Cornell faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and staff to model geographic, architectural and landscape information and potential scenarios for the future for Flushing Meadows Corona Park was ESRI’s CityEngine.

The outcomes of this research included 3D scenes of the park that are now available online on a research blog.1 These ‘webscenes’ include depictions of past, present and future conditions. In the process of creating these scenes, GIS and 3D datasets were collected and compiled in new ways. New 3D models and spatial datasets were also generated by the research team and are available from the research blog or by request from Principle Investigators. Perhaps most valuable in this process was the articulation of specific use case, in which 4D technology may enhance the preservation planning process. We also scanned the landscape of available 3D and GIS tools to understand the relative strengths and weakness of CityEngine. Finally, we proposed specific requirements and desired functionalities for software that would better support cultural landscape preservation efforts.

This report also details our research methods and summarizes our insights into the future of 4D GIS in the practice of preservation planning. We found substantial limitations to the current version of CityEngine as a 4D GIS, and hope to encourage further technological development that can unite architectural and geographical scales, as well as temporal change, to serve interdisciplinary needs of the field of preservation in planning for cultural landscapes and historic districts.

This grant also resulted in the publication of several peer-reviewed publications and a research blog called A World’s Fair Landscape in Time. We encourage the reader to review those available materials as well.

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