Ballardian

According to the BBC, a group of boffins are using a new techno toy to determine “how dubious a development project will be”, using Cannes as a model. However, instead of looking at the effects of pollution and the play of light, it seems to me they could have saved a lot of money and simply read Super-Cannes instead to glean far more accurate data — analysing the end result of, in Ballard’s words, “a lack of intimacy and neighbourliness”; of an “invisible infrastructure that takes the place of traditional civic virtues”; of “civility and polity being designed into [the development] in the same way that mathematics, aesthetics and an entire geopolitical world view were designed into the Parthenon and the Boeing 747″.

>> from BBC NEWS — TEST-DRIVING A CITYSCAPE

The world’s cities are growing all the time, and in France some are being modelled by computer for the purposes of urban redevelopment.
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Cities look after our every need: we live, work and holiday in them.
They have truly become machines for living in. But what if we want to tinker with the machine and develop a sensitive area like, say, the sea-front at Cannes?
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Now planners can turn to technology, which enables them to test drive an entire city.
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Cannes - the place where Hollywood goes on holiday - has itself become a special effect. A 3D mock-up was commissioned by the city so planners could peer into the future and see how developments will affect the chic resort’s delicate balance.
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Pull up the 3D surround sound-armchair in their lab and you can take an audio tour of the town. That, and the ability to demonstrate the passage of pollution around a city, makes this a useful potential tool for showing those dubious about a development project exactly what the end result will be.
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Now, perhaps, we can tailor our surroundings to take more account of what we want”.