SketchUp Used for Historic Preservation

Here’s a cool thing that Google has been working on that most people are probably unaware of: Earlier this year, the National Trust for Historic Preservation approached Google to see how its 3d modeling and visualization tools could possibly help with various downtown revitalization programs. The result was Main Streets in 3D which is an inexpensive way for downtowns across the country to participate.

Main Streets in 3D is essentially a contest allowing local Main Street programs to submit an outlined vision of how their downtown would leverage a digital model. Five towns in total would be selected to receive training on SketchUp and Google Earth to make the model a reality.

In July, the winning communities were selected and announced.

Winners were selected based on their ideas for city planning, urban forestry planning, and tourism promotion among other factors. Regardless of a town’s individual goals, all five winners share a common vision in attracting business, jobs, investors, and tourism to their towns. The concept for making these digital models was solidified by McMinnville, Tennessee, which was the first small town to jump on the bandwagon and show an interest in the project.

The training sessions will be conducted by Igloo Studios, an authorized SketchUp training center. Sometime this month, all five towns will have completed their respective training. Once everyone is trained, the revitalization model project will be put into the development phase and we should be seeing a progress report sometime in May 2011.

Source – google-latlong.blogspot.com