A new perspective on the use of perspective in urban visualisation

Architects, planners, engineers, developers, and government authorities, among others, are increasingly using computer-generated 3D scenes (real-time VR, animation, rendered models) in their modelling and subsequent pictorial depiction of developments and urban infrastructure to support decision making, strategic planning, identification of historically significant vistas, facades, set backs, over-viewing and so on. Within this culture of computer-generated 3D imitation of real and imagined spaces is an implied assumption that the algorithms used replicate the way we see and visually interact with urban spaces. However, the question whether the geometrically projected image, such as a perspective, replicates physiological phenomena or whether one needs to learn how to read such images has been debated since the inception of the manually-drafted 'realisms' of the European Renaissance. The key theorists who address this debate directly include psychologists, historians, and philosophers among others. Within each field there are opposing views. This paper extends the work of an earlier paper from CUPUM'01 which addressed the use of 3D CAD in urban visualisation, referring in particular to the panorama (Wyeld and Allan, 2001). In this extended version a brief historical overview of the perspective as 'physiological replication versus learned convention' debate is provided including a discussion on how the prolific use of perspective in contemporary urban visualisation tends to obscure culturally alternate methods of spatial representation. It concludes with a discussion on how perspective as a tool and the traditions that have arisen since its parallel emergence with the scientific method now effects a contemporary rationalistic interpretation of Western visual culture.