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The wooden model in the sandpit used to be one of the attractions at the open day in the city administration. Nowadays, interested residents are presented with their own city as a digital model on the screen or are allowed to stroll through their own place of residence in the Metaverse with VR glasses. In addition to the entertainment value, the motivation behind it is to make urban services more easily accessible and more economical through digital models. Virtual cities, with which their physical counterparts can be controlled and influenced, are an important building block for the smart cities of the future.
Many of the cities’ activities are currently running under the label of digital twins. What is behind it can be very different – from a simple database to a complex 3D application with real-time sensors. Some municipalities are joining forces to pool their efforts, such as Hamburg, Leipzig and Munich in the CUT (Connected Urban Twins) project. Cities like Seoul have their own digital 3D worlds (Seoul Metaverse) and are trying things out there. Despite all the new technology, it remains the task of the municipalities to keep an eye on the interests of the citizens.
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Gerhard Volkl
Gerhard Völkl is a specialist journalist for software development, data science, game programming and computer graphics.
The large corporations of Mark Zuckerberg and colleagues, on the other hand, have a legitimate interest in generating as much profit as possible with their new 3D platforms, dubbed Metaverse. Both such large companies and the cities are currently at the new technical threshold to the 3D web of the future.
