Social interaction in urban planning projects

Construction industry and the stakeholders are rapidly inclining towards the use of model-based applications such as building information modelling (BIM), also referred to as "sociotechnical system". End user perspective and feedback are an integral part of urban planning projects. Developments of ICT and advancement in the use of social media tools have provided new dimensions to web 2.0 applications enabling utilization of 3D virtual world for larger audience. Virtual environments thus act as a scene of participation and social interaction for citizens and end users enabling new methods of participative design process. This paper introduces participatory approach in urban planning through implementation of freely available social media tools and applications with underlying concept of "Social BIM 2.0". The end users can monitor the built environment and verify the needs, requirements and usability of the current and future environment. The empirical part of paper consists of two case studies, which present the results of social application testing in urban planning projects. It presents approaches and results of testing social media applications, experimental visualization methods and technologies like web-based gaming environment in urban planning projects.