We would like to turn back the wheel of time and be able to trace the development of the city of Zurich back to the Celtic-Roman settlements in an animated way. A diachronic 3D model would enable a wide range of applications. For example, one could walk with Zwingli through the streets to Froschauer's print shop.

While today’s topographical data is freely available (at swisstopo and Stadt Zürich), it is a challenge to go back in time, especially behind the earliest maps dating from the 18th century. In his book "Zürich im Zeitraffer" Thomas Germann gathered available archeological, printed and archival information and combined them all into his books with drawings of the city's development at different epochs. The illustrations show how much the topography has changed over time. Rivers have been diverted, swamps dried up and huge city walls were erected and torn down.

Idea:
Based on the information from Thomas Germann's illustrations in combination with current geodata models of the city, we want to develop a time-lapse representation in the form of a 3D visualization. Possible scenarios

Representing the entire urban development of Zurich is too time-consuming. Therefore, we aim to develop a prototype or "proof of concept" within the GLAMhack. In order to simplify the complexity, the following approaches should be considered:

1. step-by-step "remodeling" of the objects, starting from today's cityscape and based on current geodata
2. Division into two main topics:
   1. Modeling of topographic elements (Swisstopo + information from "Zürich im Zeitraffer")
   2. Modeling of structural aspects of buildings (open data + information from "Zürich im Zeitraffer").

3. Concentration on specific subareas:
   1. Area-based modeling, e.g. today's Bahnhofstrasse, Lindenhof, etc.

   2. Building-related modeling, e.g. Grossmünster, ETH etc.

Datasets

https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/de/geodata/landscape/tlm3d.html#dokumente

https://data.stadt-zuerich.ch/dataset?tags=polygondaten&tags=3d-stadtmodell

Resources

• Germann, Thomas: Zürich im Zeitraffer. Gezeichnetes und kommentiertes Stadtbild, 2 Bde, Zürich 1997-2000.

• Timelapse-Pilot-Film "Zürich im Zeitraffer", realisiert von UZH/Digital Library Space:\ https://drive.switch.ch/index.php/s/gnuiQJorZGqRzzh

• Stadtmodell "Zürich um 1800" von Hans Ferdinand Langmack: https://www.stadtmodell-zuerich.ch/de/. Die digitale Ansicht wurde 2012 von Luca Zanier und Gilbert Nigg erstellt.

• Mapview, Silvio Dall'Acqua: https://zuerich.mapview.ch/ im Layers Menü kann man anstatt der Karte auch die Bilder von Swissimage auswählen.

• OpenLayers, JavaScript-Bibliothek zur Anzeige von Geodaten im Webbrowser:\ https://openlayers.org/

• Zeitreise Zürich: seit 2020 ein Verein, vormals von Mathys Partner (http://visualisierung.ch/). https://zeitreise-zuerich.ch/

• Reiche Quellenangaben bei Zeitreise-Zürich: https://zeitreise-zuerich.ch/index.php/zeitreise-zuerich/zeitreise-zuerich-quellenangaben/