Douglas Todd: Why can’t Vancouver be like Toronto, one of many cities that provide access to data that can be easily used to create interactive 3D models that show precisely how new towers, apartment blocks and houses are going to alter the city?

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Much like a player of video games, Stephen Bohus can move effortlessly on his computer monitor through the three-dimensional digital model he has constructed of the streets, sidewalks and buildings of Vancouver.

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How will a new tower look from the air, from ground level and even from its interior? How will the highrise fit in, or not, with the existing neighbourhood? How much shadow will a new six-plex cast on adjacent dwellings?

The visual answers to these questions are there to see in the digital 3D images Bohus has painstakingly put together over weeks and months. He creates them from bits of property development data he manages to find on various City of Vancouver sites.

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Bohus, a visual effects designer in B.C.’s film industry who also has a degree in landscape architecture, is far from alone in believing........

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