Mónica V. Sánchez-Sepúlveda, David Fonseca-Escudero, Jordi Franquesa-Sanchez, Nuria Marti-Audi
The cities in which we live are changing rapidly, presenting the scenery to debate future visions of transformative designs and its impact on the city. The decisive influence of new technologies is important for the generation of a new reality from the economic, social and urban point of view. It is a challenge for organizations and society to question the status quo and experiment often. To take advantage of the changes and opportunities offered by the inclusion of digital technologies, accommodation of the digital transformation into the visualization of Urbanism is required. The interests of citizens are coming to the forefront nowadays with the awareness that a livable city does not only consist of good infrastructure and sustainable energy supply but also citizen input and feedback. The main goal of the paper is to present the use of digital transformation in processes of urban design through Virtual Reality in which specialized users can analyze, represent and transmit ideas, problems and solutions for the design of urban space. The hypothesis is based on demonstrating the following two statements: (1) the implementation of virtual gamified strategies in the field of urban design helps to critically evaluate the result of urban design, make decisions and understand the location conditions, dimensions and relationships of urban spaces thanks to enhanced visual technologies. (2) The interactive Virtual Reality system helps for the understanding of three-dimensional space and the human scale immersive perception in Virtual Reality could be a tool to defend the arguments of urban projects. The urban project we work on, promoted by the Barcelona City Council, aims to generate spaces that are designed to meet the needs of the users. The spaces are modeled virtually, intended to be an accessible environment where users (professionals related to the construction and design field) can interact –play– with, to recreate new spaces. These spaces are meant to have maximum realism, including the materials, textures, movements, and even sounds of the environment. The system is tested on the Barcelona Building Construmat Fair using a quantitative method. The data obtained from the assessment exemplify the effectiveness of virtual systems on the urban design process. The results obtained from inquiries to 79 citizens –specialized in the construction and design field –, showed that it is possible to empower Digital Transformation as Virtual Reality systems increase th