Invitation to Collaborate!

The Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) maintains a 3D model of the city as a visualization and analytical tool for understanding ideas related to the future of neighborhoods. The BPDA shares the Boston 3D city model in several formats intended to facilitate collaboration between diverse communities who have an interest in understanding places in the city as they have changed or as they may be changed. Find an overview of the BPDA's city model sharing strategy in Boston 3D User Guide.

In July 2020 the BPDA is rolling out several improvements to its city model sharing framework. These changes will make it much easier for neighboring towns, the design and development community, archivists and history buffs, and the general public to use and improve parts of the city model and to share their work with the BPDA and other users.

For more details about these improvements and new ways to use the BPDA 3D City Model, take a look at the Boston 3D City Model User Guide.

What's New?

• New Tile Grid is designed to be extendable to neighboring towns and campus in-holdings. Convergence on a unified tiling system will make it easier for users to bring together the best information for exploring situations that extend accross boundaries.
• New Coordinate System based onthe Massachuetss State Plane Coordinates requires no rotation when importing plans from surveyors and engineers. The coordinate system is optimized for exchanging models between GIS and design-oriented tools while preserving precise geolocation.
• Open-Source Formats: for exchanging models and their GIS attributes with open-source city-model pipelines like ThreeJS, Cesium Ion, and polular 3d modeling tools.
• Incremental Updates The model wil continue to be published as complete tiles and seamless data-layers, and we wil also be issuing incremental updates for users who just want to download the new and improved building models.
• New Persistent Model Identifiers make it possible to fork track changes and selectively merge and sync independent city model projects and model archives.
• Terrain and Rough Building Models Included Accross City Limits will aid in visualizing and analysing ideas that cross boundaries.

Learn More, Get Involved!

Soon the BPDA GIS department will be organizing a webinar to introduce this framework and learn more about how to engage with all of our neighbors who are interested in using, improving and extending our city model.

For more information, contact [email form]