Digital Twin for Urban Development

The metaverse is deemed to be the future of society, specifically in our social interaction as well as in the sectors of gaming, finance, and entertainment. There are also active efforts underway to harness the metaverse positively in one key sector that can prove beneficial: urban development. The metaverse within urban development consists on replicating the city itself, to a painstakingly accurate degree, using its digitized version to visualise and facilitate infrastructure and development, test new ideas, technologies and capabilities, and identify improvements for all aspects of urban living. By making this technology accessible to citizens and not just the corporations and agencies responsible for making these changes, any city is enabling its citizens to see the impact of changes and to feel included in the urban planning process (which has typically taken place at the municipal and government levels). Whether we are talking about a metropolis or a small town in terms of both population and land mass, its efforts with using the metaverse and digital twins to visualise, plan and facilitate urban planning, present an interesting opportunity to leverage emerging digital technologies in a similar manner. We will zoom in on a few examples of countries deploying the metaverse in varying stages to facilitate urban planning processes.