Visual City
Overview
Visual City is a free-admission laboratory and educational exhibition space produced by Visualiseringscenter C. Originating as an academic research project, the environment centers around a high-fidelity digital twin of Norrköping.
By combining artificial intelligence with advanced visualization techniques, the lab illustrates how municipalities can automate the highly labor-intensive process of mapping urban spaces. This digital testbed allows planners and the public to analyze, simulate, and optimize city layouts ecologically and economically before breaking physical ground.
Core Exhibition Installations
The laboratory features several interactive, research-driven stations designed to foster civil dialogue and demystify machine learning:
- Simstad (Simulation City): A large, 3D-printed physical stadsmodell (city model) layered with dynamic projections. It visualizes everything from public transit routes to emergency preparedness scenarios like extreme rainfall. The accompanying display tracks how a supervised computer vision model trains across "epochs" to automatically classify geographic features (e.g., separating asphalt from buildings).
- Artificial Architect: An interactive installation powered by the Stable Diffusion model. Visitors can provide text prompts and rough sketches to experiment with guided image synthesis. It highlights how generative AI can rapidly sketch layout variations, such as rapid redesign options for roundabouts, during public citizen forums.
- Data and Me: A collaborative feature designed alongside Linköping University and Östergötlands Stadsmission. Inspired by workshops held for the youth leadership program Power in da Hood, this module invites visitors to collect and visualize personal datasets to promote data literacy and self-empowerment.
