A tale of two cities: one real, one virtual.
Digital city-building has become a legitimate part of urban planning, helping to mirror the present — and map the future.
“Digital twins” are transforming urban planning in Barcelona, Ukraine(!), Helsinki, and Singapore and advancing archeology in Pompeii.
A digital twin is a digital model of a real-world object, using sensors to measure changes in real time. Used in urban planning, a digital twin of the city can predict how changes will affect the city over time: For example, how adding a traffic signal would affect traffic patterns.
The goal is “‘to build an oracle,’ says Jordi Cirera Gonzalez, director of the Knowledge Society at Barcelona City Council, and a man not short on ambition. ‘Like the ancient Greeks’: a place where you can ask anything you can imagine and it’s possible to find some answer.’”
Barcelona’s digital twin project “lives within the deconsecrated Torre Girona chapel, on the campus of the Barcelona Polytechnic. Where once one might have prayed to God for an answer, now one goes to a computer.”
I wrote about digital twins for cities for Oracle in 2021: The smart city gets even smarter