Design and understanding of visualizations for urban modeling

One application of computer models in urban planning is to help evaluate alternative land use policies, particularly as these policies interact with transportation and environmental issues. The ability to simulate different scenarios provides planners with a powerful decision support tool. However, the greatly increased volume of data provided by new land use models makes their effective use difficult without suitable visualization tools. We present a new approach to visualization design and describe a user study validating the approach for the design of visualizations within the urban modeling domain