The Importance of Data Visualization in City Building

From policy maps to technical drawings, city-building is an inherently visual practice. Planners, builders, institutions have always needed ways to represent data visually in order to make sense of it—be it for imagining future scenarios, assessing opportunities, or producing analyses. 

That’s why our vision for Ratio.City has always had data visualization at its core. We believe in putting information in context and making it explorable so people can use it to quickly generate and communicate insights. For the first article in our Data Visualization Series, we’d like to take a look at how visualization can help us achieve these outcomes; not just as a way to support current practices in urban development, but as a crucial approach that allows us to enhance our work and build tools for transforming cities. 

Building an understanding of our landscape 

Cities are complex environments made of interconnected systems. Looking at one single system or dataset is useful, but having a holistic view is invaluable for a deeper understanding of this complexity. In city-building, context is essential. 

Maps have a lot to offer in this sense, especially when brought into the digital realm. They are an excellent medium for institutions, private organizations, and citizens to collaborate and communicate in city-building. But they also allow us to visualize many disparate types of spatial information at the same time. For example, they allow us to examine visible and invisible components of urban development together, such as a building and its respective zoning.

Visualizing data on maps isn't just an effective way to provide data access, but it's also an effective tool for generating insights. Our brains and eyes are very good at identifying spatial relationships and patterns, which is why interactive maps are so helpful. They allow us to answer questions like “Are any developments happening near the area I’m interested in?”, or “How do policy and demographics data relate in this city?” very quickly in a visual setting. This is why we have designed our webapp as a map-based interface, empowering our customers to use visualized data as an entry point for deeper explorations. 

Finding opportunities within complex urban data 

Beyond providing a high-level view of urban systems, data visualization can help city-builders narrow down the complexity, find information that is relevant to their work, and zero in on opportunities. The visual information seeking mantra, a key insight from visualization theory, says, “Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand.”

Digital maps and interactive charts allow us to see an overview of our landscape and zoom in on critical information; visually identifying and keeping track of data that applies to a specific use case. For example, you may want access to zoning information, nearby developments, public assets, or distance from transit so you can accurately evaluate a building opportunity for a parcel of land. 

These visual tools also allow us to filter thousands of data points across an entire city so we can find locations that meet our criteria. But that's just the beginning. Visual data exploration is iterative, so it's vital that our tools allow us to build on our findings. Once we have visualized the results of our searches as maps or charts, we can easily reuse them to conduct further analyses or update our reports to communicate our findings.

Visualizing potential

Addressing urban transformation with this approach doesn’t just provide an efficient way to access and explore information: we can use visualizations to produce new data—and, ultimately, new work. 

The data we have visually sourced through our explorations can be used to produce a wide range of analyses and assessments—from 3D massing and shadow studies for new developments to transportation analyses or environmental risk simulations. These well-established practices have always relied on visuals as a way to present information. They provide clarity to a project—allowing us to easily model and share concepts with our teams, partners and community. 

But our maps and charts can go one step further by allowing city builders to visualize real-world constraints such as height limits, existing policy, terrain topography. This added context makes data visualization a precise tool for validating assumptions, evaluating alternatives, and generating data-driven scenarios. It allows us to more accurately plan our projects and effectively mitigate risks as part of the due diligence and decision-making process.   

Bringing it all together

The importance of data visualization as a way to support city-building is undeniable. It provides planners, builders, and municipalities with a sandbox to explore and test new ideas for their communities. It allows them to validate their assumptions and maximize development potential. And it highlights the intricacies of our urban environments and empowers all stakeholders to pursue urban transformation. 

Part II of our Data Visualization Series will take a closer look at how you can use web platforms such as Ratio.City to convert disparate data sets into powerful visual assets. From data exploration to analysis, we’ll show you how our tools allow a data-driven approach to planning and make it easy for city builders to navigate the road ahead.