Not only are they
pretty and
good for the environment, but they let
architects do things that they would never have been able to do before, like build in parks and protected lands such as green belts.
It also removes the control from the owners of the model and costs a lot less;
Architect Jeremy Nicholls of Cobourg, Ontario built a model of his small town as a way to fight City Hall as part of a local Architectural preservation society; developers» renderings always look
pretty and are taken from the
best vantage point, but it is much harder to pull one over when anyone can virtually walk around the building at ground level.