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A new specialty service gives technology-savvy architects a field of practice that was unheard of 10 years ago. Architects David Colleen, of Planet 9, San Francisco, and Mike Rosen, of Mike Rosen and Asso-ciates, Architects, Philadelphia, have committed their firms to the modeling of cities. They create 3D models of buildings, streets, and other structures, and render them realistically with ``textures'' taken from digitized photographs of the real buildings. With fast enough hardware, Web users can ``navigate'' through one of these models and experience the city as if they were actually walking, driving, or flying through it.
Colleen and his colleagues have modeled approximately 15 cities, including Austin, San Francisco, Tokyo, New York, and San Diego, which can...