Preparing for the Metaverse: Civic Hub - A Case Study in Using Virtual Reality and AI as Tools for Urban Planning and Citizen Engagement

In preparation for the emergence of a metaverse, or a virtual world mirroring the real one, cities as well as other actors are now developing solutions for different activities in civic life. Urban planning is a field where immersive visual solutions (VR) are being developed to facilitate planning and citizen dialogue to meet the demands for participatory measures. As the design of immersive cityscapes aimed at co-creation is a challenging task, we suggest a human centred design process to create a solution gathering user feedback in real time through an AI application that will process and present the feedback, possibly even generating a visual aggregation. This will allow for citizen participation on a larger scale, creating conditions for co-creation in urban planning.