Drop in on Hackney

Residents of the London borough of Hackney can now refashion their local environment online.

The borough's sites have been captured on an interactive website - a collaboration between the Hackney Exploratory and the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Casa) based at University College London.

With funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, aimed at raising public understanding of the benefits space analysis has for planning towns and cities, the website will turn Hackney folk into decision-makers whenever they switch on their PCs.

Hackney's architecture has been carefully archived and rendered into 3D form, allowing a virtual tour of the area.

Also included on the web pages - and on an accompanying CD-Rom - is a "drag and drop town" where popular landmarks in the borough can be arranged in new locations.

Andy Smith of Casa said: "Online virtual worlds can provide a real boost to public participation in the planning process and can help us to design better cities. The 3D virtual world has a greater impact on us than a 2D plan can ever have - allowing us to pose and answer 'what if?' questions and also vividly to challenge our preconceptions."

www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/hackney