Urbanly's five screens

Urbanly sells CityCompass, a simulation of a region's households, firms and developers on its real parcels. Its home page opens on "Watch your city's next decade before you commit to it" over a dark street map, then turns into five small games.¹

Each screen asks one question and sets one target, and the reader moves things on the map to meet it.¹

• Who can reach what, on foot? Drag three schools to put 60% of homes within a ten-minute walk of one; the walking map repaints as they move.¹
• Does a new line change who can reach what? Draw a transit line and place stops to bring more than 2,000 parcels within fifteen minutes, with four stops or fewer.¹
• What does growth do to traffic? Place 12,000 jobs without pushing peak delay past ten minutes. Traffic runs on the same simulated households as the housing market.¹
• How many homes get built, and when? Upzone a corridor or plan a site and try to deliver 4,000 homes by 2035. Developer agents build only what pays, and the counter can end short of the target.¹
• Will these homes be livable in 2040? Plant up to 900 trees to bring a corridor to 30% canopy, scored against the 3-30-300 rule, and watch the peak street temperature fall.¹

A sixth screen asks nothing. It pulls back to the whole district and shows everything the reader changed standing together: the schools, the extended line, the blocks painted with jobs, the new homes and the trees.¹

Each screen is one question a resident might ask, with one number to beat and one thing to move, and the cost of a choice shows up on the next screen, where jobs become traffic and upzoning meets what developers will build. The tradition is the explorable explanation, here used to sell a working planning model, CityCompass. Urbanly says its simulation models have been deployed in more than 50 public agencies across five continents.¹