Draw me a picture!

We say one picture is worth a thousand words, a good video even more, and that's so true!

Recently, in Park City, a party that had a big stake in a huge real estate development, produced a composite video showing how awful the result would be. It spooked the entire Park City community and, last November, the project was voted down, even though it was hardly if not impossible to build, feasible.

Yet, the city didn't go through the nitty gritty of the obstacles that stood against this herculean project. Still, the citypayed $65 million to purchase the land and turned it into open space.

What a trick; it worked, and today the landowner is laughing all the way to the bank! Today, a friend of mine, back in my home town and ski resort of Morzine, France, is actively fighting a project of a large capacity gondola that is supposed to alleviate some of the ski resort's unsolvable transit problems.

The idea he supports is for a similar gondola, but using a different route that seems to make more sense, both from a practical and an aesthetically point of view, when compared to that town's official proposal.

The problem is that most local citizens, after hearing about the project for years, have already a very tough time visualizing it, yet alone seeing how both projects look like and can't even less compare them side by side in their mind's eye.

This is where a visual comparison of both plans (each based on the existing 3-D video displayed below) makes so much sense in exposing the good and ugly sides of one plan over the other.

I really hope something is developed along these line to give people who either lack the time or the visual imagination to see for themselves what they are up against, so they can help their community reach the best possible decision.