In 2018, Dr. Lee and the ART member Ankit Kelkar created an AR mapping exhibit in conjunction of the Urban Complexities Symbolism, which was organized by City Building Lab UNCC on Mach 23. This event drew more than 200 participants from the area, including planning practitioners, community activists, local developers, etc. We developed a set of AR apps to allow users to view socio-economic data in 3D for Mecklenburg County as well as two historic neighborhoods in Charlotte. This AR exhibit was aimed to explore the new junction between the conventional mapping methods and many new emerging digital techniques for data processing and visualization, including 3D GIS, integration with AR, and integration with remote sensing Imagery.
ART was a part of an Open Streets event on September 30, 2018. OpenStreets704, a non-profit organization was the main organizer for this event. ART worked with Niantic Lab to add Pokémon-Go as an activity for the event. Another key feature to this Open Streets event was a neighborhood history walk, for which ART collaborated with Charlotte Mecklenburg Library to develop a Neighborhood History Walk App. This experimental app utilizes AR to guide users to visit a number of identified locations along the route of this Open Streets event. Users are able to see historical photographs of street scenes through this AR app at these locations. This app allows users to compare what was in the past to what is now at these selected locations in Charlotte.