What role does AR play in urban planning and development?

Augmented reality (AR) enhances urban planning and development by enabling real-time visualization of projects within their physical context. AR overlays digital models onto real-world environments, allowing planners, developers, and stakeholders to evaluate designs at scale before construction begins. For example, a city planner could use AR glasses or a mobile app to project a 3D model of a proposed building onto an empty lot, assessing how it fits with nearby structures, sightlines, and sunlight patterns. This immediate spatial feedback helps identify design conflicts early, reducing costly revisions later.

AR also improves collaboration between technical teams and non-expert stakeholders. Developers can create interactive AR experiences that let community members “walk through” virtual infrastructure—like parks, transit hubs, or housing complexes—using their smartphones. In one case, a city used AR to demonstrate how a redesigned intersection would affect traffic flow and pedestrian safety, allowing residents to provide feedback before finalizing blueprints. For engineers, AR can layer subsurface utility data (like pipes or cables) onto construction sites via headsets, reducing the risk of accidental damage during excavation.

Finally, AR supports iterative design and scenario testing. Planners can simulate multiple versions of a project—such as varying building heights or green space layouts—and toggle between them on-site to compare impacts. For instance, an AR tool might visualize how different tree placements affect shade coverage in a public plaza over the course of a day. This capability is particularly useful when integrating AR with geographic information systems (GIS) or building information modeling (BIM) data, enabling dynamic analysis of environmental factors, zoning rules, or infrastructure capacity. By streamlining these processes, AR helps teams make data-driven decisions faster while maintaining transparency with the public.