Recently, under the sponsorship of “Top 10 Science and Technology Issues of Southeast University” launch and cultivation fund, the digital urban design team of the School of Architecture has achieved significant progress. The 50-person team led by Professor Yang Junyan accomplished the digital urban design practice project in Weihai City.

It’s always been considered as the conundrum in international urban design to implement the intricate and complex spatial form of traditional urban design to the construction and management of specific cities. In the digital urban design practice in Weihai City, Shandong Province, the team led by Professor Yang Junyan developed the application scenarios and method flow in respect of digital urban design. They took the initiative in realizing the whole-process digitalization from design to control, and this achievement separated from the pure text model for the first time. It has integrated and drafted the comprehensive urban design and the overall urban design coverage on the digital platform from multiple levels and multiple perspectives, which would be conducive to improve the city’s overall space quality, increase the operation efficiency and service level of urban design and management.

In terms of the comprehensive urban design, the R&D team fully utilized digital analysis techniques such as LBS big data, POI big data and streetscape AI analysis interactive platform to conduct in-depth researches on the status quo of Weihai City from the perspective of history, space and landscape. The team confirmed the core design concept and defined the “fine spirit” of Weihai from the aspects of mountain and sea, ecological construction, landscape view and space form, etc.. In terms of the overall coverage of urban design, the team, according to the comprehensive urban design intention, started from spatial form, public space and landscape, then defined the management area and units, which has thus realized the interaction and transmission of urban design intentions at different scales, implemented the overall and unified fine design of the urban city. In terms of the digital platform of urban design, on the basis of the current 50 national invention patents, the team has genealogized, regularized and coded the design intents of overall urban design coverage so as to guarantee that the design intents could be transmitted to the digital platform without damage, thereby realizing the digital, intelligent and fine management and control of the planning management platform.

At the project’s expert review meeting, the experts panel headed by Meng Jianmin, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, unanimously agreed that the digital urban design achievements have reached the international first-class and domestic leading level. At present, the digital urban design achievements have been gradually applied to the actual urban administration of Weihai Natural Resources and Planning Bureau, which has greatly improved the efficiency of local authority in planning management and approval. The landing and application of digital urban design achievements in Weihai represent a major step forward in the frontier work of digital urban design science, and also lays a solid foundation for the follow-up work.