YouCity Real Estate

The Urban Synergy Group seeks new approaches to assess real estate properties in the urban context based on personal preferences. In a first test case, the Zurich neighborhoods Seefeld and Mühlebach were analyzed extensively to identify, evaluate and catalog existing densification potentials. Based on building regulations and geographical information, volumetric potentials and qualitative location criteria were retrieved for the assessment of real estate properties. Turning building regulations into rule-based digital devices enables city planning officials to test and evaluate several densification strategies. Additionally, it enhances the monitoring process of real estate investment potential for great institutional investors.

The project introduces a new pipeline for the creation, analysis and visualization of photo realistic 3D cities generated from 2D ArcGIS data with CityEngine and RealityServer®. The latter runs in a GPU-based cloud computing environment, enables the sharing and full remote interaction with complex 3D cities on mobile devices such as netbooks, tablets or even the iPhone.

The identification of volumetric underused real estate properties arises from a comparison of the actual state and the maximum possible exploitation predefined by current building regulations (e.g., BZO City of Zurich). Since building regulations are mainly rule-based, CityEngine is the perfect tool to describe digitalized spatial regulations and to view the modeled city. As a result, maximum densification options as well as the current physical condition of the built environment were visualized. Additionally, information relating to areas and volumes were extracted for every single plot and the whole city.

Urban Synergy Group

Moritz Pürckhauer, MSc ETH Arch 
Anne Mikoleit, MSc ETH Arch 
Niels Lehmann, MSc ETH Arch