Algorithms for the Automatic Generation of Urban
Streets and Buildings
Soon Tee Teoh
Department of Computer Science, San Jose State University
San Jose, California, USA
Abstract - We describe the algorithms we have developed
to automatically generate street networks and building
plots in the automatic procedural creation of a realistic
city. Our system first sites the important regions of a city,
such as the commercial center, historical center, and
residential areas. Then, a network of freeway and main
roads are built. Finally, a network of streets are built
throughout the city. The main contribution described in
this paper is the design of the freeways, main streets and
minor streets, and the allocation of space for the roads and
buildings in the city. Compared to existing methods, our
system creates cities that more closely mimics real-world
cities, and can also generate millions of streets in seconds.
Keywords: procedural modeling, 3D graphics
1 Introduction
Virtual graphical model of cities are frequently used
as the setting of computer games and virtual movie sets.
The automatic generation of realistic city models is
therefore very useful. Furthermore, algorithms used in
realistic computer-generated city plans can be used as
instructional tools in city-planning and geography classes.
In creating new virtual environments for a computer game
level, the automatic city generation tool must (1) create a
new unique city, (2) create a city that is ``realistic'', sharing
common-sense similarities with real-world cities, and (3)
generate the city within a few seconds.
We have developed a system that creates a new city on
an empty terrain, according to user preferences. Beginning
with the city layout found by the Autopolis [9] procedural
city creation process, we create freeways, major streets and
minor streets. We then find the boundaries of building
parcels, and split the parcels into multiple plots. The major
contributions of this paper are: (1) the allocation of space to
simulate the width of freeways, (2) a fast algorithm to build
grid minor streets, (3) a fast algorithm to build curvy
suburban style minor streets, (4) a fast method to find
building parcels, and (5) a fast method to split building
parcels into multiple building plots. We first describe the
existing work in procedural city generation, and then
describe the novel features of our system.
2 Related Works
Greuter et al. [2] presented a procedural method to
generate ``pseudo-infinite'' virtual cities in real-time. They
are able to generate buildings with different facades, using
different textures, in real-time. As the user pans across,
their program creates more random buildings in real-time,
giving the illusion of an infinite city. In our work, we focus
on more realistic cities, not only office buildings. We create
residential areas, industrial areas, historical areas, and
commercial areas, for example. Also, we create a more
varied and realistic road network with freeways, main
streets, and smaller streets.
Lechner et al. [3] proposes using autonomous agents
to grow a city. Urban land-use is classified into three types:
commercial, residential and industrial. Different types have
different preferences, for example, residential developers
prefer regions where roads are less congested, are close to
water, and are far away from industrial areas. This is
similar to the process that we use to site commercial and
industrial centers. However, we consider even more
detailed land-use areas, such as airports, seaports, historical
areas and government areas. Also, we have developed a
system to generate realistic streets.
Parish and Mueller's [5] system, called CityEngine,
uses L-systems to generate streets and buildings. The inputs
to the system are height maps, land/water/vegetation maps,
population density maps, zone maps, street patterns (such
as regular grids or radial), and building-height maps. This
method focuses on generating street patterns and does not
determine the land-use type of different areas of the city.
Therefore, this method can only generate the commercial
(downtown) area of the city, but not the entire city, because
the distribution of building heights and street density is
uniform throughout the entire scene. Our work tries to
mimic the complexity of different patterns of city streets
and layouts.
 Sun et al. [8] created a virtual road network. They materials and finished products for export. At the end of
build road patterns based on image-derived templates and each step in the process, the user is allowed to edit the
rule-based systems. They accept an input map of the program-generated output as well as specify preferences
population density of the area, and then intelligently before the program proceeds to the next step.
produce streets of different patterns based on geographical
and urban restrictions, such as elevation and congestion.
Our street-creation algorithms share some similarities with
their methods, but ours is integrated into a more realistic
city creation process that produces a city with different
integrated regions with different land-use. We create a
freeway pattern according to the layout of the city, and
assigns an appropriate street pattern to different parts of the
ciy.

DiLorenzo et al.'s [1] create a hierarchical model

based on zoning and other heuristics based on sociological
and empirical information from real-world cities. For
example, the density is the highest in the Central Business
District and decreases with distance from the center. Their
system then runs a simulation of the city growth/decay over
time.

Another related work is Thomas and Donikian's [10]

system for creating and animating populations in a virtual
city. They presented a method for simulating pedestrians
and vehicular traffic in a virtual city. Their work can
possibly be adapted to populate the cities created by our
process.

There are also some works that automatically generate

buildings, such as CGAshape [4] and Instant Architecture
[6]. There is also some work [7] to generate computer
graphics models of actual real-world cities, given data such
as terrain map.
Teoh [9] uses a different approach in the Autopolis
city creation tool. Given terrain information, Autopolis sites
commercial centers, industrial centers, ports and airports
according to city-planning heuristics. Then, a network of
freeways is automatically generated to connect these
centers. Commercial and industrial regions are grown from
their respective centers, and residential centers are also
grown around them. Then, within the commercial area,
government and historical areas are allocated. Finally, a
network main streets and small streets are built.
3 Process
We follow the process laid out in Autopolis [9], shown
in Figure 1. This method produces a fairly complex city
layout with sufficient realism, mainly because the regions
of the cities are sited based on geographical features and
city-planning rules, for example, that airports prefer to be
on flat land, and near water for possibility of future
expansion. Another example is that industrial areas tend to
be near seaports and airports for ease of transport of raw
Figure 1: The procedural city generation process
The problem with the original Autopolis system is that
they do not describe a rigorous system to allocate space for
the streets and parcels for buildings. This is necessary to
create a detailed graphical model of a city in which the user
can explore. In particular, freeways are very wide and take
up significant space; a typical eight-lane freeway is more
than 50-meters wide. Since the path of a freeway is
represented as zero-width lines, space needs to be allocated
on the map so that no buildings or other streets will be built
on the freeway. Furthermore, Autopolis does not describe a
real-time algorithm to create a large network of streets. In
our system, we allocate space for freeways, introduce a fast
street-generation algorithm, and also introduce a new
algorithm to build curvy streets in suburban neighborhoods.
Then, we describe a new real-time method to find
plots of land between streets, and sub-divide the plots into
individual building parcels. Thus, our system uses the
process in Autopolis to design the macro aspects of the city,
such as the locations of different regions and land-use, and
we introduce methods to design the fine features of a city:
the street network and building plots. In this way, we make
significant progress to building a highly realistic complex
city environment in real-time.

4 Space for Freeways

Freeways are built between the centers of the city.
Centers include commercial centers, industrial centers,
airports and seaports. Additional ring freeways are built
outside of the downtown area. Simple path-finding is used
to create the freeways. There is an increase in cost for going
over water, and for going to a neighboring cell with a
different elevation. When the path of a freeway has been
found, it is denoted as a connection between cells in a
coarse grid. The coarse grid is used for fast path-finding for
freeways. The terrain height map, city centers, and general
land-use are all defined on the coarse grid. Each coarse grid Figure 2: A quadratic Bezier curve for a freeway
cell is defined to be 50 meters across.

Before building fine streets, a fine grid is set up. Each

grid cell size in the fine grid is set to be 10 meters across.
Each fine grid cell has a use type. First, the freeway is scan-
converted to the fine grid cells. The original representation
of a freeway is a connection between coarse grid cells.
When scan converting to a fine grid, the freeway is treated
as a piecewise continuous quadratic Bezier spline. In other
words, if any three consecutive freeway control points are
not in a straight line, these three control points are taken to
be the control points of a quadratic Bezier curve. This is
shown in Figure 2. In this way, the freeway (unlike local
streets) cannot have abrupt turns. This is because freeways
are designed for continuous fast-moving traffic with no
stops, and therefore they cannot have abrupt turns.

After the freeway has been scan-converted, for each Figure 3: Scan-Converting a freeway
fine grid cell that is assigned the freeway type, all fine grid
cells within four fine grid cells are assigned the ``freeway
reserved'' type, so that no minor street or building can be
built on these reserved cells. The scan-conversion process is
shown in Figure 3. An example of the final generated map
is shown in Figure 4, showing that fine grid cells are
undeveloped (green) around freeway cells. Minor roads and
building parcels are not allowed near freeways. Major roads
are allowed to intersect freeways via overpasses. Access
ramps can then be built from the major roads to the
freeways.

Figure 4: A freeway
5 Major Streets
In a city, there are major streets and minor streets.
Major streets are wider, carry more traffic, and have traffic
signal priority over minor streets. In a city, the total length
of minor streets is more than the length of major streets.
Our system first creates a network of major streets on the
coarse grid. First, the coarse grid is divided into a regular
grid of cells. Each cell has, say, 10 x 10 coarse grid points.
To create a regular pattern of major streets, the center point
of each cell is chosen as a seed point. To create an irregular
pattern, a random point is chosen within each cell. A path-
finding method is used to connect every chosen point with
its adjacent points. This algorithm is described in the
Autopolis [9] paper.

Before minor streets are created, the major streets, like

the freeways, are scan-converted into the fine grid. Each
cell that is adjacent to a major street cell is also marked as
``reserved''. Next, minor streets are created within each
area surrounded by major streets.

6 Grid Minor Streets

For each fine grid cell, the possible roads out of the
cell are to each of its eight adjacent cells. In other words,
only diagonal and axis-aligned roads are allowed. Each
adjacent cell is assigned a number, from 0 through 7. Two
bits are allocated for each adjacent cell. The values possible
for the two bits are: 00 for no street, 01 for minor street, 10
for major street, and 11 for freeway.
Within each region R bounded by major streets, a grid
of minor streets can be created, either axis-aligned, or
diagonal. First, all cells belonging to Region R is marked.
To find all the fine grid cells belonging to Region R, first
mark all the fine grid cells that belong to a freeway or a
main street. Then, for each unmarked fine grid cell, set it to
the current region R, and flood fill all surrounding cells
until no unmarked cell is found. After this, all fine grid
cells will be marked with their unique region number.
Figure 5: Grid Minor Streets: Diagonal, axis-aligned, and
different frequencies
7 Suburban Minor Streets
The grid street patterns is suitable to imitate American
urban centers, since many U.S. commercial centers have a
general gridded pattern of streets. However, in the suburban
residential areas, particularly in more wealthy
neighborhoods, this pattern is not suitable. Therefore, we
have developed a method that generates more realistic
suburban street patterns, where the roads are curved and
not straight.

To set the grid minor streets, first determine the

frequencies MajorRes and MinorRes of the minor streets.
For example, the frequencies may be 10 cells in the major
direction, and 5 cells in the other perpendicular direction.
The abbreviated algorithm (ignoring special cases) to grow
diagonal fine streets is as follows: For each Cell (i,j), if
mod(i,MajorRes) = mod(j,MajorRes), grow street up and
right, and if mod(i,MinorRes) = mod(j,MinorRes), grow
street down and left The method to grow axis-aligned grid
streets is similar.

An example of grid minor streets is shown in Figure

5. This example contains both axis-aligned and diagonal
grid minor streets, as well as grids of different frequencies. Figure 6: Suburban Minor Streets
 First, a region of residential land bounded by major After all the triangles have been reserved by all the
streets is set to have the curvy suburban minor street streets. The remaining contiguous triangles together form
pattern. Then, for every fine grid cell in the region, run the one parcel. This is shown in Figure 8.
GrowCurvyStreet method. The GrowCurvyStreet method
starts by finding a random adjacent existing street, and
connects to this street. Then, it repeatedly finds the next
cell to grow to, with the condition that the next cell must
not be adjacent to any existing street. When no more
candidate next cell can be found, it finds an existing street
one cell away and joins to this existing street. An example
of curvy minor streets generated by our algorithm is shown
in Figure 6.

8 Building Parcels
After all the streets, major and minor, have been
created, each piece of land bounded by streets is considered
one parcel on which a building can be built. We first
determine the geometry of the parcels, and then optionally
split each parcel into multiple plots. One building can be
built on each plot.
Streets are represented as zero-width lines. To create
parcels for buildings, it is necessary that the parcels be
receded from the streets so that the buildings do not grow
on top of any street. We have designed a fast algorithm to
quickly find the parcels. The diagrams in Figure 7 show the
steps. First, each fine grid cell is divided into equal four
triangles that meet at the center of the grid cell. Each
triangle can either be reserved by a street or else be part of a
parcel. Next, each street is scan-converted to the triangles.
Figure 7 shows how to scan-convert an axis-aligned street
and a diagonal street. In each case, the triangles
surrounding the street are reserved for the street.
Figure 8: The colored triangles are the remaining triangles
of a parcel after all the street segments have reserved their
triangles. All contiguous un-reserved triangles form one
parcel where a building can be built.
The next step is to find the outline of a parcel. The
outline of a parcel is a subset of all the edges of the
triangles belonging to the parcel. First, set all edges to
unmarked. Then, for each triangle belonging to the parcel,
toggle all its edges (from unmarked to marked, or from
marked to unmarked). After this, all edges that are marked
form the outline of the parcel. In other words, these are all
the edges that belong to only one triangle belonging to the
parcel.
Once the outline of a parcel is found, the parcel can be
split up into multiple plots. A building is built on each plot.
To split a parcel into two plots, find the longest straight
edge of the parcel. Then, find the midpoint of the straight
edge. At this midpoint, split the parcel along the
perpendicular direction. An example is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 7: Top: Dividing a fine grid cell into four triangles.

Middle: Scan-converting a horizontal street to reserve the
surrounding triangles. Bottom: Scan-converting a diagonal
street to reserve the surrounding triangles.
 Figure 9: Split a parcel into two building plots
9 Performance
This program is run on an Intel Pentium 1.6GHz
processor, with 504 MB of RAM. It takes 5.25 seconds to
create minor streets on 2225 x 2225 (4,950,625) cells. It
takes a further 9.64 seconds to define all the building
parcels. It takes 0.19 seconds to split the parcels in 540 x
540 (291,600) of these cells into two building plots. Due to
memory constraints, we do not create minor streets and
building parcels in the entire 100km $\times$ 100km city.
However, as the user moves through the scene, these can be
created on-demand. An overview of the city is shown in
Figure 10 and a close-up view of the city is shown in Figure
11.
Figure 10: Overview of the city
Figure 11: Close-up view of the city center, showing a
freeway, freeway overpasses, and office buildings built on
plots of land.
10 Future Work
The next step is to build more detailed models of
buildings, streets and other landscape details. For example,
graphics models are needed for divided freeways, lanes,
ramps, and streets need to be modeled as well, with street
lamps, lanes, traffic signals. More varied building models
and textures can be created. Currently, buildings are grown
straight up in their plots. We can next create circular
buildings, sloping buildings and other variations to make
the city look more interesting. Models are also needed for
suburban houses, shopping malls, schools and other
buildings. Parks, open spaces and gardens also need to be
modeled.
For the more basic creation of street networks and city
land-use, we can also enhance the algorithm. For example,
the curvy minor street pattern can be modified to take into
account the terrain, as streets sometimes follow the
contours of the terrain. Also, we can have more interesting
street patterns that are not restricted to the axis-aligned and
diagonal directions.
11 Conclusions
We have presented methods to quickly create streets
and building plots for a realistic procedurally-generated
virtual city.
We first use the Autopolis process to site commercial
centers, industrial centers, ports and airports according to
city-planning heuristics. Then, a network of freeways is
automatically generated to connect these centers.
Commercial and industrial regions are grown from their
respective centers, and residential centers are also grown
around them. Then, within the commercial area,
government and historical areas are allocated. This process
creates a realistic layout of the city, according to city-
planning principles. For example, airports tend to be on flat
land, industrial areas tend to be near airports and seaports.
Historical centers tend to be near the government civic
centers. Commercial centers with a high concentration of
skyscrapers are usually not far away. Urban areas also tend
to grow along coasts and on low land. Some scenic areas
along rivers are also reserved as parks and open spaces.
From the general layout of the various land-use types
of the city, our program begins to create streets. First,
freeways are created to connect the different centers of the
city. This is done using a simple path-finding method that
minimizes cost. There is cost for going over water and cost
for going to a cell of different height. Cells are then divided
into fine grid cells and cells next to the freeways are
reserved to take into account the width of the freeways so
that no buildings and streets will be created over the
freeways. Major streets are allowed to go across and access
the freeways. The allocation of space for the freeways is the
first major contribution of this paper.
Next, a network of main (major) streets is created.
This is done by setting a regular, irregular, or hybrid grid of
points on all built-up urban cells. Simple path-finding is
used to connect each grid point with adjacent points. In this
way, main streets are created. The frequency of these streets
can be increased near urban centers to simulate increase in
density.
The second major contribution of this paper is the
algorithm for the fast creation of grid minor streets. The
user sets the frequency of the minor streets in the major and
minor directions. The algorithm creates a grid of minor
streets in a region bounded by major streets. Each fine grid
cell has eight possible streets to the eight adjacent fine grid
cells. A flag is set for each street going to an adjacent cell.
The grid can be in the axis-aligned direction or the
diagonal direction.
The third major contribution of this paper is the
algorithm for creating curvy suburban minor streets. For
each suburban region bounded by major streets, seed points
are repeatedly chosen at random. From the seed point, a
curvy minor street is repeatedly grown to a random
neighboring cell. A neighboring cell is only a candidate if it
is not currently a street and it is not currently next to an
existing street. In this way, a network of curvy streets is
grown to cover the entire region.
Finally, we have described a fast algorithm to allocate
building parcels. This is done by dividing each cell into
four triangles. The streets first reserve the triangles that
they intersect. All unreserved triangles belong to buildings.
A set of contiguous unreserved triangles makes up a
building parcel. The boundary of the building parcel is
found. Each building parcel can be further subdivided into
multiple building plots. Then, a building can be built on
each plot.
We have thus presented methods to quickly create
different types of urban street patterns: freeways, main
streets, grid minor streets, and curvy suburban minor
streets. In this way, a realistic pattern of streets can be
procedurally created very quickly. Next, we have also
allocated parcels for buildings. Combined with the
Autopolis city-creation process, we can build a large layout
model (100km x 100km) of a realistic city within a minute.
Graphics models of buildings, streets, trees, bridges, and
other landscape features can then be built according to this
layout, and a full virtual city environment is created, ready
to be interactively navigated and explored.
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