---
id: engines/vu-city-clara
about:
  label: VU.CITY / CLARA
  description: >-
    VU.CITY Limited supplies 3D city models and planning tools for the built
    environment in UK and Irish cities and New York; CLARA Technologies
    simulates wind, air quality and temperature street by street from a 3D city
    model, live in Brussels.
  tags:
    - 3D city model
    - planning
    - microclimate
    - air quality
    - wind
tool:
  form: Planning and environmental applications
  group: 3D cities and mapping
  homepage: 'https://www.vu.city/'
open:
  source: closed
  data: partly
  api: 'yes'
  participation: unknown
domains:
  - places
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: 'VU.CITY | Visualise, Model and Understand Urban Change in 3D'
      url: 'https://www.vu.city/'
    - title: CLARA | City-Level Adaptive Resilience Applications
      url: 'https://www.clara.city/'
  reviewed: '2026-10-18'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
VU.CITY is a 3D city-model platform from VU.CITY Limited, London, for architects, developers, planners, local authorities, asset managers and utilities. It combines managed city models (the site says over 3,000 square kilometres accurate to 15 cm, covering Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, New York, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton and others) with camera tools, data layers, proposed developments, a microclimate tool, and SiteSolve, a generative early-stage site design tool. Models come in through plugins for Revit, SketchUp and Blender. Case studies on the page include the City of London's skyline work, Bristol City Council, a 3D web map for Southampton's digital planning consultation and visual impact assessments at Lichfields. It is commercial, with packages and a free trial; a new version of the platform is in early access.

CLARA, from CLARA Technologies, is a different thing: an urban environmental simulation that starts from a 3D model of buildings, terrain and streets, ingests earth observation, ground sensors and weather forecasts, and runs a computational fluid dynamics engine accelerated with machine learning to give past, present and forecast wind, air quality (NO2, PM2.5, PM10, O3) and temperature at 1 m resolution, with noise to follow. It is delivered three ways: an API with real-time and forecast endpoints, CLARA-web for local administrations and other organisations with a territory (subscribed per area and layer), and CLARA-app, a free citizen app with location alerts. Its first application, BrusAir, was built for the City of Brussels' smart-city programme and has been live since June 2025. The site's roadmap gives June 2026 for the app's public release, September 2026 for the CLARA-web launch, noise maps in autumn 2026, and Antwerp and Ghent in early 2027; CLARA joined the Horizon Europe ACCEND accelerator in August 2026 and publishes a validation report.

Neither page states a connection between the two companies; they are listed together here as related applications, not as one product.