Generative design as a communication tool for more efficient planning processes

With a score of 3 on a 10-point scale in the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth´s report "Corporate conditions and reality" from 2017, the construction industry one of the lowest-scoring industries when it comes to digitization. By many this is considered to be one of the underlying reasons for the industry´s low growth rate.

Digitalization can include a lot, but one of the parts where it is clear that development has been slow is during the planning processes.The planning processes are often complex and require good interaction and understanding between many stakeholders.

A design concept for a new area or district must both be in line with the city´s long-term urban development vision and at the same time be economically viable for the developer who will run the project.

Even with perfect information exchange, this is no easy thing, but the "document-based" planning process that today often prevails hardly makes it any easier.

Especially for large projects, the amount of information in preliminary investigations and investigations can become virtually inconceivable, which makes it very difficult to familiarize yourself with the project.

These investigations and preliminary investigations are needed to get the full picture of the project´s prerequisites, but there is also a need for a parallel and more agile way of comparing different types of design concepts that provide a contextual understanding and an overview of the possibilities.

The information also needs to be standardized and collected in one place.On the developer side, there is a strong financial incentive for process efficiency and digitalization.

Not least with increased industrial construction has accelerated these actors´ adaptation of digital technology because an unbroken flow of information can provide large production benefits and better risk calculations.

Better processes on the client side alone will not solve the efficiency problem in the industry in the long term unless the review side can also keep up with this development.

One of the most requested features of the platform is to be able to export PDFs of proposals for co-review with the city.

This example shows how easy it is to relapse into a "document-based" planning process where the unbroken flow of information is destroyed.

To avoid this, we want to enable city planning offices to use the platform as a parallel review, planning and communication tool.In this project, we want to explore how concept models in a web boundary layer created with generative design can help both clients and the city to make more informed decisions and reduce risks and lead times.

The project is about inviting city planning offices to a two-step digital platform.

The first step will serve as a feasibility study to better understand the review processes and what is requested on that page. After a qualitative investigation, more urban planning offices will be asked in the second implementation phase.

A quantitative study will then be carried out to better understand the benefits, challenges, and future potential of using algorithm-based design in review processes and in the development of detailed plans with and without the developer´s advice.