Just a quick shout-out to Pauline Hackwood and the City of Nanaimo’s planning department for their initiative in starting to model Nanaimo’s downtown in Sketchup Pro, and for making these models available to others in Google Earth via the 3D Warehouse.

The City of Nanaimo is now managing a 3D Warehouse Collection called Nanaimo Current Models, containing Pauline’s models and any other good models of Nanaimo the collection managers run across.  If you’re interested in having your high-quality photorealistic geocoded model added to this collection, let the City know in the Nanaimo 3D Models Google Group.

These tools are a great way to convey planning information to the public.  In the future, hopefully the City will also be able to publish historical models of buildings that have been replaced and conceptual models of new developments for public review.

-J

P.S. Cheers to the Sketchup folks too; it didn’t take them very long at all to evaluate the initial set of models and push them into Google Earth.

P.P.S. Like all articles on this site, this represents my personal opinion and viewpoint, not that of my employer.