---
id: communication/urbanly-five-screens
about:
  group: Playing
  label: Urbanly's five screens
  depiction: communication/urbanly-five-screens.jpg
  description: >-
    Urbanly's home page: five screens, each a planning question with a target,
    where the reader drags schools, stops, jobs and trees to meet it.
  tags:
    - explorable explanation
    - urban planning
    - accessibility
    - housing
    - urban heat
    - scroll-driven
story: {}
domains:
  - places
  - people
open:
  source: closed
  data: unknown
  api: unknown
  participation: open
  note: >-
    Anyone can play the screens on the public home page; the simulation behind
    them, CityCompass, is a paid product.
relations:
  - predicate: built_on
    target: engines/urbanly-citycompass
  - predicate: cites
    target: communication/explorable-explanations
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: Urbanly — CityCompass (home page)
      url: 'https://urbanly.org/'
    - title: About — Urbanly
      url: 'https://urbanly.org/about/'
  created: '2026-10-24'
  reviewed: '2026-10-24'
  reviewed_by: >-
    Claude, from the home page text and a screenshot, after Anselm named it a
    good example of communicating well
  status: draft
---
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](/communication/explorable-explanations/), here used to sell a working planning model, [CityCompass](/engines/urbanly-citycompass/). Urbanly says its simulation models have been deployed in more than 50 public agencies across five continents.[^1]