Planners invited to see how Virtual Reality helps regeneration

Virtual Reality will play a major role in regeneration projects in the future, senior planners will hear at a conference being held in the University of Teesside on Friday (14 November, 2003).

Organised by the Virtual Reality at Teesside Ltd, the event is aimed at central and local government planners and staff from local government housing and regeneration departments.

The Government’s Minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, praised the Virtual Reality Centre at Teesside during a visit to the North East last year. He said after seeing the facility: “I can see the tremendous advantages and potential this Virtual Reality facility must have for city and town planners. You can really see how future developments will fit with their surroundings.”

Janice Webster, chief executive of the VR Centre, said the ‘Virtually for Real’ conference on 14 November, will provide an opportunity to let planners see what has been achieved by the centre and discuss how the European Union supported University facility can help other regeneration projects in the future.

One of the event’s main organisers, Greg Stone, the VR Centre’s Funding and Strategy Manager, said: “We have been involved with a number of important regeneration projects including using the technology to explain to community groups what councils and architects are planning for their areas. Projects have included redeveloping estates in Grangetown and Middlesbrough to creating VR models of Middlehaven and Teesside Airport to help people visualise what is being planned for the future.

“To develop this work further, we have invited a number of senior local government planning people and others connected with housing and regeneration projects to the conference on Friday 14 November. A lot of people have heard about Virtual Reality, but don’t necessarily understand how it relates to them and our aim is to explore how we can work together during the conference.”

Among those speaking will be Sean Egan, from Tees Valley Regeneration; Professor Tim Blackman, a regional regeneration expert from the University’s School of Social Sciences & Law and Clive Davies from the Tees Forest project. During the morning, there will be demonstrations of virtual reality applications connected with urban and rural regeneration; city scanning and urban scenario simulation.

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