About ur-scape

OVERVIEW

ur-scape is an open-source planning support tool specifically designed to assist towns, cities and regions experiencing rapid urbanisation. It addresses urgent and complex challenges that arise in such areas by harnessing the available geospatial data however diverse and varied in quality. By seamlessly combining different types, scales and sources of those data, ur-scape provides intuitive, interactive and reliable outputs that can be easily navigated and analysed in real-time.

ur-scape encourages city makers to tackle interconnected practical and strategic challenges of urbanising environments collaboratively. It empowers mayors, policy planners, developers, consultants or community leaders to collectively address the ‘stress points’ such as flooding, traffic congestion, poverty while enhancing the ‘sweet spots’ such as accessibility, equity, economical vibrancy. The tool helps integrate actions on the ground with broader urban systems, as well as national strategic plans and global development goals to foster sustainable and resilient living environments.

Harness data

In rapidly urbanising areas, harnessing data is essential to empower effective design and planning processes. While data is abundant in such contexts, it is often uneven and fragmentary with varied resolutions, scales and formats. ur-scape provides tools to make the most of existing geospatial data, making it easy to analyse, manage, and standardise so that city-makers can focus on decision-making.

Contours Tool

The contour tool demarcates areas where one or more data sets intersect. This is useful for narrowing criteria for specific planning purposes such as site selection, optimising development areas, or developing regional resilience strategies.

This example maps districts in Bandung, Indonesia that have both high population density and low access to piped water, showing how the Contours tool can create insights from existing census data.

*Note: Visualization based on old test dataset and does not reflect situation in Bandung today

Reachability Tool

The reachability tool generates time-based travel maps on the fly, taking into considering three transport modes: car, motorbike and walking. It includes a function to add ‘new roads’, whereby users may create links within existing transport networks in order to make simple studies on reachability.

This example shows the extent of residential and commercial areas in Singapore that are a 10 minute drive away from Singapore General Hospital in Outram Park, Singapore – an analysis that may be helpful in planning ambulance response zones.

Link scales

The rapid advancement of transportation and communication technologies has deepened interdependence between cities and regions, and between centres and hinterlands. At the same time, it has also deepened spatial inequality and fragmentation. ur-scape helps decision-makers analyse problems across local, regional, national, and global scales.

Powerful visual engine:
Analyse data across scales

The powerful visualisation engine in ur-scape, powered by the industry-leading Unity engine, lets the user analyse multiple data layers at the same time – even while zooming in and out of cities and regions. And integration with Mapbox helps you situate your data in the context of the broader world.

This video demonstrates how ur-scape’s visualisation and analysis functions are readily usable on geospatial data at global, regional, and city scales, manipulating these datasets in real-time.

Promote participation

As cities and regions continue to grow and diversify, particularly in the Global South, city-makers will face multiple competing needs and aspirations that are simultaneously complex and urgent. How do we make sure the needs of several communities are heard – and met? ur-scape includes tools to foster new kinds of informed participation to engage growing and diversifying populations in the decision-making processes required for sustainable urbanisation.

Word Cloud:
Visualise Community Voices

A growing number of cities are using geolocated surveys to understand the needs of different communities. ur-scape’s Word Cloud tool visualises geolocated survey data, allowing you to literally see the voices of different communities alongside other geospatial data. This encourages you to actively utilise and respond to community input, enabling responsive planning pathways.