Urban World

Big data made beautifully simple – visualising the economic power of cities. Our nine year (and counting!) relationship with our global management consulting client has included some fascinating projects; the Urban World app – visualising the past, present and future economic power of cities – was certainly one of them. Derived from their lengthy study that covered the GDP, population and household income for more than 2,600 cities, the challenge was to turn a spreadsheet of 50,000 data points into an intuitive and interactive experience. The app shows an overview of the cities on a 3D globe, with more granular insights revealed from side-by-side comparison of regions, countries and cities. The client consults for top organisations, businesses and governments around the world, each sitting on their own sources of big data. We developed an encrypted and secure mechanism to dynamically import relevant data, allowing an executive to view their own sales or social figures for any of the 2,600 cities directly within Urban World. This extension of the platform allows our client to offer Urban World as a valuable digital addition to their traditional face-to-face consulting.