Computer scientists are teaming up with planners, developers and big data tools to inform decisions about megadevelopments. The goal of one fledgling effort is to develop a prototype computational framework that would be instrumental in planning the infrastructure for the future 600-acre Chicago Lakeside Development, a minicity sited on a former U.S. Steel complex on Lake Michigan, 10 miles south of downtown.
"Planners don't want to rely on intuition or hope. They want to rely on science," said Charlie Catlett, co-director of the $400,000 LakeSim computational project, at the Architectural Record Innovation Conference 2013, held on Oct. 3 in New York City. AR and ENR are published by McGraw Hill Construction.