Photogrammetry has an important enabling role to play in making visualization technology practical and cost effective. This paper focuses on visualization techniques that satisfy the practical requirements of a series of urban environmental planning and design case studies done at the Centre for Landscape Research (CLR). It will illustrate some of the more important data characteristics that help to make visualization effective in practice. The paper will conclude with an outline of research topics that we would like to see the field of photogrammetry address. If these new tools can be made, we believe their introduction will accelerate the use of photo-textured visualization in planning and design practice 1. AN EVOLUTION OF PLANNING PRACTICE Virtual reality and three-dimensional visualization are on the verge of changing the practice of urban environmental planning and design. Instead of presenting citizens with abstract maps and descriptive text to e xplain, analyze and debate design ideas and urban processes, planners will be able to show people explicit phototextured information of what their city will look like after a proposed change. This evolution in practice could meet with some skepticism from professionals who may feel they are well enough trained to “see” the implications of ideas in map and plan form. However, it is our experience that once clients and the public develop a taste for this form of communication they will demand that planning practice change.