Last Updated on March 11, 2013 by New-Startups Team
If you were a fanatic of SimCity growing up you surely can understand the overwhelming wave of optimism and teeth-biting anticipation of SimCity 5 and its upcoming release. Simulating urban design however doesn’t have to be limited to SimCity, to quench your thirst-of-anticipation for the next release we wanted to share StreetMix.net.
An ongoing experiment by Code for America Labs, StreetMix is an interactive street section builder. Inspired by Blockee, the team has spent “about five hours” on the current build as a proof of concept, work in progress and pre-release alpha. The urban environment-building project invites users to create, pair and imagine a streetscape setting with a large gamut of typical road elements to develop a cross-section view of a streetscape.
Users can implement bike and car lanes, greenery, sidewalks, boulevards and medians to design a 2D non-perspectival drawing commonly used in engineering and architectures to show what something would look like head-on. You might live in a bustling 2-lane city street, but might want to know what it would look like if it were turned into a single, one-lane street with a larger walk-able area with benches and trees – if that’s the case you should give StreetMix a whirl.
StreetMix lets you envision how a city street could be re-configured for improved livability. By limiting the amount of elements one can add to a street, the web-app adds the needed realistic components necessary in urban planning simulation. For every addition, something needs to be subtracted and develops very well designed artistic representations of street compositions.
In the spirit of its creation, via a Code of America hackathon, the team invites people to comment and send feedback and suggestions on the application. Or live the urban planning personality hiding inside you and design your streetscape at StreetMix.net.