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Argonne, Chicago University Partner on Urban Planning for 21st Century Cities; Charlie Catlett Comments

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Chicago cityscapeThe government has partnered with the University of Chicago in a move to address rapid urbanization through LakeSim, a tool that can churn out a computation-enabled design of the world’s future cities.

Representatives from the school and the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory are developing LakeSim and other platforms to help plan large-scale development projects, ANL said Tuesday.

“For a single building, developers have to make decisions based on varying reports from the energy developers, the economic analysts, transportation planners and others,” said Charlie Catlett, LakeSim co-principal investigator at Argonne.

“The challenge is what to do that with hundreds of buildings going in over a 20-year timeframe.”

LakeSim is powered by the Environmental Systems Research Institute’s CityEngine three-dimensional GIS-enabled design system and works by using scientific analysis to suggest how a locale should be built, not only considering the possible infrastructure, energy and transportation demand but also the other resources inhabitants will need to thrive throughout the lifecycle of that urban area.

According to the lab, it has put together a prototype of LakeSim in collaboration with architects, engineers and urban developers, with an initial focus on long-term planning for energy and transportation facilities on the 600-acre Lakeside project in southern Chicago.

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