Boston 3D Smart Model

The City of Boston Planning Department's GIS Lab maintains a citywide 3D model of terrain, groundplan and buildings, used for planning and development review and published for download in the public domain.

What is reusable: partly open sourceopen dataAPI unknownunknown participation Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)The model is downloadable by tile in open formats and as SketchUp under the PDDL; the citySchema stewardship architecture it is managed with is described as open source.

The Boston citywide 3D Smart Model is maintained by the GIS Lab of the City of Boston Planning Department, which took over the staff and responsibilities of the Boston Planning & Development Agency. The model has three components: terrain, groundplan and 3D building models. It originated from the city's 2011 planimetric data and is updated from urban design models, CyberCity 3D and lidar. It is managed through the citySchema model stewardship process, a 3D model architecture and digital asset management system developed by Paul Cote (cityschema.org).

The city uses it so that planners, policymakers and the public can see proposed development in 3D and assess its effects; a citywide view is available online, and the site also lists a physical model room.

What is open: the whole model is available for public download, divided into tiles. Each component comes in open data formats, and an all-in-one SketchUp model per tile combines them; a citywide SketchUp tile grid places the tiles. The download page states that the data is released under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL). The about page calls the citySchema architecture open source. The pages read say nothing about an API or about how outsiders might contribute.

Status: operational and regularly updated; the pages give no date for the latest update.