Impact

• People are provided with excellent information and insight in city reconstruction plans, on a 24/7 basis. They are able to evaluate the past (panorama views) with the present (webcam) and the future (plans). People are provided with the possibility to give their feed back in a well-structured way, and in some cases to vote for certain alternatives. While navigating through the world, citizens and stakeholders are able to exchange their views. This is truly an innovative way to support the participation of citizens in decision making processes. The Virtual Cities remain and are used for various other applications.
• Virtual Apeldoorn is structurally used to explain and discuss planned changes in several areas of the city. Normally those meeting suffer an atmosphere of resentment. Many people have problems with understanding a spatial design from a paper or vocal explanation. In this case the attendees reacted positive. They felt better informed and taken seriously. They appreciated the possibility to visit the virtual plans from their home and give additional feedback. In conclusion: many more inhabitants are being informed much better, felt taken seriously, and use the option to respond in a structured way.
• Based on the experiences with colleague virtual cities, the board of the city of Tilburg took the important political decision to allow the inhabitants to vote for one of three selected alternatives for a new design of the central marketplace (“Heuvel”). The city council decided to execute the design that received the majority of all votes. Within 3 weeks about 14,500 visitors looked at the alternative designs, took part in a very interesting chat discussion and/or gave their response in the forum. Alternative C received most of the votes. The reconstruction of this alternative is currently under preparation. The cooperation of the Virtual Cities forms a strong basis for further development and innovation.
• Based on the experiences and on the data from citizens documented by the systems, a roadmap for further research and development is regularly being updated. Interesting functionalities such as the voice-chat option are developed, and the usage of DigiD for identification purposes in the online voting processes is under preparation. Another interesting application is time travelling for educational purposes (showing the evolution of a certain area as function of time).
• In the city of Venlo the city council decided that all major reconstructions within the city must be communicated using Virtual Venlo.  
• In The City of Apeldoorn the Virtual City was used intensively to communicate the plans to build five new windmills. As a result the procedure went much smoother.

Track record of sharing

Especially for the sharing of knowledge, the three leading cities, with the help of state aid, started up a national knowledge platform on this subject. On www.virtueelnl.nl it is possible for all users to publish their lessons learned and share them with other stakeholders. The platform is designed using the open source content management system Joomla, making it very flexible and easy expandable.

Additionally, the involved cities regularly give lectures on the subject during both national and international events. As an example a lecture was given during the Forum for the future of democracy in Madrid organized by the Council of Europe.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Inhabitants respond very positive to the Virtual City approach. They feel better informed about spatial plans and taken more seriously. They take the opportunity to respond and to discuss the subject with other visitors of the virtual city.

Lesson 2 - This kind of technology and functionality needs to be implemented as a normal municipal infrastructure.

Lesson 3 - Coming up with excellent ideas is important. Being able, in one way or the other, to implement new ideas,represents the real challenge. The quality of the city’s administration determines whether decisions can be reached within months instead of years.

Lesson 4 - This tool for interaction and communication offers various new possibilities. Much has to be learnt about how and when this tool can be applied in an optimal way. For achieving sufficient progress, Virtual Cities should be applied proactively, in a creative and flexible way. Many experiments may be expected from the Virtual Cities.

Lesson 5 - Research by the Dutch Railways, now a user of the virtual world, has shown that research in a virtual world is a good substitute for research in a tangible physical environment. After a few minutes, visitors are already experiencing the virtual world similar to the physical.