Greenville to publish public downtown 3D model; city explains tile strategy and limits

Barrett Armstrong, the city's senior urban designer, told council the planning department has developed a public downtown 3D model with two versions: a lightweight, citywide view and high-resolution downloadable tiles for specific development sites. Armstrong said the model will be publicly accessible on the city's website and showcased in a new Civic Design Center so residents, designers and developers can "work from the same playing field."

The two high-resolution options include a textured, Google-Earth-like imagery version and a cleaner white-box aerial that will be updated multiple times annually. Armstrong described a tile strategy to manage file size and compute demands: users will download only the tiles they need for a specific site so the entire downtown dataset is not required for most uses.

On capabilities and limits, staff said the model will include metadata layers for approved buildings (zoning, square footage and other approved attributes) and will accept updated tiles from developers after formal approvals; however, Armstrong said the current model will not perform real-time traffic or pedestrian simulation. "Not within the model," he said when asked whether it could run real-time scenario analysis, but added the city will continue conversations with the private partner Seaman Whiteside about advanced features.

Council members praised the tool for public engagement and scenario visualization, noting the tool's potential to help residents "feel" the scale of approved projects and to reduce confusion about building heights and massing. Staff said they are building instructions and guardrails for submissions and will work with IT on secure file-transfer and filtering processes to maintain model integrity. The council adjourned the item because of time constraints and planned to view a fly-through of the model online and at a later meeting in the Civic Design Center.