AR-Ready Cities: Charleston, SC

Unlocking Better Conversations

Augmented Reality (AR) is transforming how cities communicate urban development, allowing residents to visualize changes in real time. Charleston, SC, has embraced AR to foster discussions on growth, inclusivity, and resilience. With the help of inCitu’s Geospatial AR Toolkit, Charleston became one of the first U.S. cities to pilot this innovative approach to urban planning.

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Key Partners

• Virtual America: Experts in reality capture and digital twins, augmented art and historical visualization.
• Moondog Animation Studio: Specialists in 3D modeling and animation.
• inCitu: Provider of the AR-ready city model and Geospatial AR Toolkit.

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Pilot Summary

In Charleston, SC, inCitu engaged with two local partners: Paul Turner’s Virtual America, and Moondog Animation Studio, who were already envisioning a 3D renaissance for their city with projects exploring reality capture, digital twins, and augmented art and history. Sharing a belief in the power of AR for civic engagement, they launched a partnership with inCitu to make Charleston one of the first two US Cities to pilot our open-data-to-AR pipeline, a standardized process we developed for NYC’s complex development landscape a few months earlier. Over eight weeks, we combined open data and data from developers to bring future projects to life in augmented reality and engage local residents with the future of their built environment.

Charleston faces unique challenges as a historic city that must balance architectural preservation with new developments. Additionally, the city is vulnerable to flooding and climate-related risks. Engaging the public in complex planning decisions—such as waterfront development and flood protection projects—is crucial for success.

inCitu’s AR platform addressed Charleston’s needs by transforming raw city data into 3D models that residents could interact with in real-time. By visualizing proposed developments through AR, Charleston’s citizens were able to better understand how changes would affect their community.

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Key Features

• Open Data Integration: Utilized open city data to create realistic 3D models.
• Real-Time Visualization: Provided immediate insights into upcoming developments, from new buildings to flood mitigation infrastructure.
• Community Engagement: Interactive QR codes allowed residents to explore AR models of future projects on their streets.

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Making Complex Challenges Tangible

Charleston also ranks as one of the metropolitan areas most vulnerable to flooding. The city is currently involved in several large waterfront development proposals including an ambitious Perimeter Protection Barrier plan that has opened a public conversation about the future of Charleston’s waterfront. Charleston is the home of historic preservation, so we knew Charlestonians demand careful, multi-stakeholder conversations about urban change.

Working with our local partners Virtual America and Moondog Animation Studio, we chose to visualize part of this complex waterfront infrastructure project. This allowed us to show City of Charleston stakeholders on all sides what has been proposed as well as educate them on environmental impacts related to sea level rise. Moondog Animation did an exceptional job modeling a section of the upcoming seawall. Again we saw immediate organic engagement with on-site QR Codes. Accessing key public infrastructure projects like the seawall lets planners, policymakers and the public weigh the benefits and impacts of new development while also making the costs of inaction tangible.

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Eyes on the Street

Another key project showcased the development of a mixed-use property on King Street. The AR model revealed 50 luxury apartments and 5,000 square feet of retail space, attracting immediate attention from passersby. A group of students engaged with the AR tool, validating the platform’s ability to involve the public, especially younger generations, in urban planning conversations.

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Impacts

AR made it easier for Charleston residents to engage with city planning. For example, visualizing the proposed Perimeter Protection Barrier—a vital flood prevention measure—helped citizens, planners, and policymakers grasp the project's benefits and environmental impact. The AR tool enabled transparent, informed conversations about Charleston’s future.

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Conclusion: The Rise of Augmented Cities

Charleston’s pilot project with inCitu’s AR platform demonstrated the power of augmented reality to enhance public understanding and engagement in city planning. The success of this initiative highlights the potential of AR to make cities more resilient and prepared for future challenges. As AR becomes more widely adopted, cities like Charleston are leading the way in using this technology to create more informed and inclusive urban development.

a recent Bloomberg CityLab article declares, “AR is coming for cities.” Jonathan Aski, Director of the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic, is quoted: “I think we’ll see a growing digital divide between cities that embrace AR and those that thwart it.” Recent market research predicts hundreds of cities will be using virtual and augmented technologies by the end of the decade. Despite this paradigm shift, it’s still somewhat rare to find 3D data in the open data portals or GIS hubs of U.S. Cities. Now that the public-facing uses of 3D information about our cities are poised to explode, what can cities do to become, and what does it mean to be, an AR-Ready City?

Our experience in Charleston helped us realize that scaling AR for cities heavily relies on the quality and availability of city planning data. We know the future of city planning is in 3D, and as Spatial Computing practices such as reality capture, augmented reality, and digital twins become widespread, open data needs to work in 3D by default. Small improvements could make a big difference. For example, comparing Charleston and San Francisco — where we were able to generate 96 projects, all “Ready to AR”, from publicly available information in only a few hours — we saw that availability of just a few key attributes such as building heights and footprints could have made a huge difference in the amount of projects we could bring into AR automatically.