[Link].

com/scientificdata

OPEN A Global Feature-Rich Network

Data Descriptor Dataset of Cities and Dashboard
for Comprehensive Urban Analyses
1,2 ✉
Winston Yap1 & Filip Biljecki

Urban network analytics has become an essential tool for understanding and modeling the intricate
complexity of cities. We introduce the Urbanity data repository to nurture this growing research field,
offering a comprehensive, open spatial network resource spanning 50 major cities in 29 countries
worldwide. Our workflow enhances OpenStreetMap networks with 40 + high-resolution indicators from
open global sources such as street view imagery, building morphology, urban population, and points
of interest, catering to a diverse range of applications across multiple fields. We extract streetscape
semantic features from more than four million street view images using computer vision. The dataset’s
strength lies in its thorough processing and validation at every stage, ensuring data quality and
consistency through automated and manual checks. Accompanying the dataset is an interactive,
web-based dashboard we developed which facilitates data access to even non-technical stakeholders.
Urbanity aids various GeoAI and city comparative analyses, underscoring the growing importance of
urban network analytics research.

Background & Summary

Urban networks offer a powerful and intuitive lens to view, understand, and model the complexity of cities1–6.
Presently, network analytics is employed to optimise decision-making procedures across all urban scales, rang-
ing from coordinating city-wide vehicle fleets to the planning and design of active mobility systems7,8. Machine
learning and predictive GeoAI offer numerous untapped opportunities to extract valuable insights from urban
networks and expand existing use cases9–12. While significant progress has been made, the task of generalis-
ing machine learning methods to urban networks remains a critical challenge. Specifically, constraints in data
consistency and interoperability, model explainability, and the feature representation of varied built environ-
ment features within networks make this a complex task13–15. Moreover, current graph-based learning methods
continue to prejudice a technical interpretation of urban streets based largely on the structural properties of
networks, despite emerging evidence that graph algorithms learn from both structural and attribute-based fea-
tures16. Towards advancing analytical and methodological innovation in urban networks, uniform, contextually
comprehensive, and open spatial network datasets can serve as an invaluable resource for the urban research
community. Good feature representation not only helps to improve model performance but makes it easier for
domain experts and decision-makers to understand and interpret the results of GeoAI models. This is particu-
larly important in urban applications where the rationale behind the model’s predictions needs to be transpar-
ent and explainable. Developments in related built environment domains have demonstrated the wide-ranging
potential of open datasets to unify community analytical efforts and cultivate a more rigorous and critical urban
science17–21.
Urban streets, serving as multifaceted channels of city life, naturally lend themselves to modeling urban net-
works. Although various network representations exist due to diverse analytical motivations across urban dis-
ciplines, primal planar road networks have emerged as the predominant representation in modern efforts22–27.
These networks depict road segments as edges and intersections as nodes28. Primal planar networks have gained
prominence for their geometric fidelity, data and tool interoperability, and use case flexibility, making them
particularly useful and effective for a wide range of applications.
Primal planar networks preserve the geometric accuracy of urban streets in 2D euclidean space, result-
ing in a visually intuitive model that facilitates interpretation and communication among researchers, urban

1
Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. 2Department of Real Estate,
National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore. ✉e-mail: filip@[Link]

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planners, and policymakers. Furthermore, these networks are compatible with numerous geospatial data types,
allowing for seamless integration with popular geospatial analytical tools and techniques29–34. This compati-
bility enables primal planar representations to directly benefit from the growing availability of spatially accu-
rate, location-based urban data, including social media check-ins, business location data, and crowdsourced
information35.
For urban and regional planning, primal planar graphs supplemented with contextual built environment
data can support various applications and use cases. These networks are essential in transportation planning for
assessing traffic flow, identifying bottlenecks, and optimizing road networks36–38. Network population estimates
can also help evaluate the accessibility of public facilities, such as schools, hospitals, or parks, empowering plan-
ners to pinpoint underserved areas and prioritise infrastructure investments39–41. Street view indicators along
network edges are crucial for modeling pedestrian-friendly urban environments and suggesting improvements
to promote walking, cycling, and other active transportation modes42–45 In emergency planning, identifying
critical nodes and links can inform strategies to enhance city resilience against various shocks and stresses,
including climate change, natural disasters, or economic fluctuations. Lastly, building morphology information
along networks plays a vital role in energy-based modeling and carbon forecasting for urban areas, providing
insights into the implications of urban growth for social, economic, and environmental outcomes19,46.
The growing availability of open urban data presents opportunities to construct a global-scale network data-
set of cities with rich contextual and semantic embeddings, including street view imagery, building morphol-
ogy, points of interest, and urban population indicators. However, to our knowledge, no such dataset currently
exists for individual cities or urban regions. Existing projects, such as the Stanford Network Analysis Project
(SNAP) and the Network Data Repository, offer undirected road networks for investigating structural network
attributes, but feature representation is limited to structural and topological indicators47,48. Similarly, the Global
Urban Street Networks project offers a comprehensive repository that encompasses both directed and undi-
rected geometric and topological properties of urban networks49. Currently, users also experience considerable
entry barriers since substantial software expertise is required to effectively visualise and analyze network data.
Although the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project hosts a comprehensive crowdsourced collection of road networks
and points of interest, raw OSM network data often suffer from data consistency issues and lack useful network
indicators32,50,51.
This paper introduces the Urbanity dataset52, which spans 50 global cities across 29 countries, overcoming
these limitations. Urbanity53 collects comprehensive spatial information on urban network elements, supporting
various urban applications and use cases in urban planning and research. Our open and consistent workflow
ensures reproducibility of urban networks and enables comparative analyses between cities. We ensure high
usability and consistency of generated urban networks through meticulous data screening, pre-processing, and
harmonisation efforts. Extensive data validation, involving both automated and manual checks, is performed
throughout the process to guarantee data quality and consistency. Our work expands upon previous efforts in
several ways: (1) we develop a completely open workflow to generate urban networks; (2) we create and augment
city networks with rich contextual and semantic indicators; (3) we build an interactive visual dashboard that
makes urban network data accessible even to non-technical users.
The dataset is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license and it
is hosted on Figshare ([Link] All source code used to generate and
validate the dataset are available under an open-source MIT license ([Link]
The Urbanity dashboard source code is fully accessible ([Link]

Methods
Our data workflow consists of the following three main steps: (1) data identification, retrieval, and
pre-processing; (2) data harmonisation, generation, and integration into urban networks; (3) dashboard con-
ceptualisation and development. We employ a consistent and standardised analytical pipeline to pre-process
open data from various built environment domains (population, street view imagery, building morphology, and
urban amenities). Figure 1 provides an overview of our workflow.

Data identification, retrieval, and pre-processing. Several considerations factor into the selection of
urban datasets: (1) open source; (2) use case suitability. A key aim of our data set is to promote open benchmark-
ing and comparative analyses of global cities. Open benchmarking and comparative analysis help to promote
urban innovation, optimise resource allocation, and facilitate the transfer of knowledge between cities. For this
purpose, we selected open datasets with reasonable global coverage. Another motivation for data selection is to
continue supporting the open source eco-system. Free and open source projects have been one of the main con-
tributors of planning technologies innovation in the last decade54. Recent breakthrough technologies such as the
ChatGPT series were almost entirely developed on open source technologies and information55. For this reason,
we selected datasets with open access licenses to faciliate usage for downstream analytical purposes. Another
important consideration is use case suitability. We see an increasing trend among urban network analytical use
cases to use spatially granular location data for local scale prediction. For such cases, coarse urban environment
data could negatively impact model predictive performance by masking fine-grained heterogeneity along urban
networks. To address this concern, we made the decision to include population data with high spatial resolution.
These conditions imply that some popular datasets such as Google Street View, WorldPop, and the Global Human
Settlement Layer were omitted due to either proprietary or granularity reasons.
Data retrieval is a non-trivial task given the size, scope, and diversity of data. To create a consistent and
standardised data collection process, we developed customised workflows to automate data extraction and
pre-processing.

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Fig. 1 Overview of open workflow. Our workflow integrates urban data from heterogeneous open layers and
provides a consistent framework to construct feature rich urban networks of global cities. Sources of the data
samples: (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, Mapillary, Meta. Basemap: OpenStreetMap and Mapbox.

Population data. High resolution population data is essential to support planning efforts, playing a critical
role in infrastructure planning and resource distribution. We obtain population data from Meta’s high-resolution
(30-metre) population density maps which is built from global satellite imagery and census data56,57. Population
data is updated on an annual basis by Meta and currently unavailable for Russia, Ukraine, and Mainland China.
The data set is released under a Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY 4.0) which permits users to
freely share and adapt the data set. Each country’s population file is distributed as either Tag Image File Format
(TIFF) or Comma Separated Values (CSV) and includes population counts for socio-demographic groups such
as total population, women, men, elderly, youths, and children. For large geographic areas (e.g., United States),
population data is further split into multiple files. Meta provides two options for information retrieval: (1)
Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) or (2) Amazon Web Services (AWS). Since HDX is free and allows for direct
download for desktop pre-processing we opt for the HDX approach (metadata and data files available at: https://
[Link]/dfg/tools/high-resolution-population-density-maps). Accordingly, we webscrape
uniform resource locator (URL) from HDX for all countries, socio-demographic groups, and file types. The most
recent population statistics are now accessible for the year 2020. In the course of our analysis, we noticed that
the data files for certain countries include supplementary columns related to the preceding year, 2019. To ensure
uniformity across all cities, even those without 2019 data, our dataset exclusively reports population figures for
the year 2020.

Street network, points of interest, and building footprints. We extract street networks, points
of interest, and building footprint data from OpenStreetMap (OSM). OSM is an open collaborative mapping
platform that hosts the most comprehensive global crowdsourced collection of geospatial data58. The data from
OpenStreetMap (OSM) is released under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). Access to
OSM data is facilitated via the Pyrosm API, granting users entry to raw, regularly updated OSM data sourced
from GeoFabrik. This method serves to avert potential bottlenecks that could arise from repeated queries to
OSM’s Overpass API.

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Fig. 2 OpenStreetMap preprocessing workflow. Flowchart of OpenStreetMap preprocessing workflow for road
networks, building footprints, and urban points of interests. Sources of the data samples: (c) OpenStreetMap
contributors. (a) Road networks are topologically simplified to primal planar representation. (b) Building
footprints are converted to valid polygons. (c) Points of interest are retrieved, procedurally checked, and re-labelled.

Figure 2 presents an overview of our pre-processing workflow for OSM data. For street networks, we
pre-process raw road networks by removing nodes that do not conform to primal planarity32. This helps to sim-
plify network structure and reduce over-estimation of node degree in networks22. Points of Interest (POI) entries
are recorded under OSM’s primary key tags (amenity, shop, tourist, leisure). However, not all tags correpond
directly to urban amenities. To address this issue, we manually inspect and choose relevant tags under each pri-
mary key tag. For example, we extract ‘museum’, ‘gallery’, ‘artwork’, and ‘attraction’ from the tourist primary key
tag. A further pre-processing step was employed to deal with duplicate tagging. For instance, some amenities
were found to be tagged with multiple labels (e.g., amenity and shop). To prevent double counting, we apply pro-
cedural selection across each observation. More specifically, we first check if the amenity field is empty, and if it
is, we check for values in the order of tourist, leisure, and shop. Finally, we relabel the list of amenities according
to eight main categories–civic, recreational, entertainment, food, healthcare, institutional, social, and commer-
cial. While we strive to establish useful urban categories, we acknowledge that any approach to urban classifica-
tion remains a complex and subjective endeavour due to the diverse and eclectic nature of human systems which
span many cultures and disciplines. In line with this viewpoint, our software grants users the adaptability to
harmonise POI categorisations with their precise needs and the distinct local contexts they are operating within.
For buildings footprints, we implement a procedural script to ensure that all buildings correspond to valid
polygons. This step is necessary to ensure that building footprint area can be computed downstream. In particu-
lar, we first check the geometric type of each building row and convert line objects into polygons. For objects
with multiple lines (e.g., compounds with inner courtyards), we build polygons in a two-step process: (1) iden-
tify the exterior building perimeter by geographic extent; (2) build polygon with building perimeter as bounds
and interior lines as open space within each building.

Street view imagery. Street view imagery (SVI) provides a scalable and accessible option for planners to
understand the physical characteristics of streetscapes, such as greenery, building cover, and visual complexity.
We obtain SVI from Mapillary which is the world’s largest platform for free and open street view imagery. Till
date, Mapillary’s coverage has penetrated most global cities around the world thanks to myriads of contributors.
Compared to proprietary options such as Google Street View, Mapillary images are hosted under a CC-BY-SA 4.0
licence, which allows users to freely share, use, and adapt images. Images may also be updated more frequently
and enjoy better coverage for dense urban areas44,59. The latest access point is provided via Mapillary’s Version
4.0 application programming interface (API). To obtain a list of target images that correspond to each city’s
boundary, we adopt a two step approach: (1) spatial query intersecting vector tiles (see Mapbox documentation:
[Link] for image meta data; (2) spatially filter image points that

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lie within administrative boundary. Subsequently, we extract meta information such as geographic coordinates,
image ID, camera bearing, and timing of image capture. The image segmentation process involves the automated
identification and extraction of semantic label masks that represent various visual elements, such as buildings,
roads, cars, and greenery. On hardware, we segment SVI images with a NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3090 GPU which
allows processing up to 90,000 images daily. Pre-computation enables users to compute SVI indicators within
seconds, even if they lack GPU access or expertise in SVI workflows, considerably facilitating such analyses and
lowering entry barriers in this domain.

Data harmonisation, generation, and integration. Administrative boundaries. We employ pre-post

processing to harmonise spatial data across a variety of data representations and urban scales. First, we manually
inspect and extract city administrative boundary and subzone data from various sources–Database of Global
Administrative Areas (GADM)([Link] OSM Overpass ([Link] and local gov-
ernment sites (Germany: [Link] New
Zealand: [Link]
In general, GADM data is provided under the GADM license which permits free usage for academic
and non-commercial application (except files for Austria which are shared under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license). OSM data are provided under the ODbL license and Code for Germany files
are provided under an open MIT license. Similarly, files provided by the New Zealand government are released
under the CC BY 4.0 license.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 model was helpful in providing OSM Overpass queries for municipal administrative
boundaries (e.g., Kowloon and Zagreb). In many cases, administrative boundaries had to be integrated across
various sources. For instance, certain cities only had subzone level information for the country level (e.g. GADM
Level 0) or wider metropolitan region (GADM Level (1) but not directly for the city level. To deal with such
cases, we adopt a general four step spatial harmonisation process: (1) project all shapefiles to common global
coordinate reference systems (CRS); (2) obtain spatial entities that spatially intersect city boundary via spatial
overlay; (3) filter out spatial entities that do not correspond to valid polygons; (4) visually check spatial cor-
respondence and manually relabel missing subzone names. To the best of our knowledge, there is no existing
method capable of automating the manual relabelling process on a large scale. Although we note that the emer-
gence of expansive geospatial foundational models could provide a promising way forward in this domain. We
subsequently project administrative boundaries to local CRS and implement a spatial buffer (to account for edge
entities) before extracting road network, building, and POIs from GeoFabrik.

Urban population. Meta provides population data in both Tag Image File Format (TIFF) and Comma
Separated Values (CSV). For some countries, population data is available in only one file format for certain sub-
groups. To facilitate downstream analytical tasks, we implement workflows to process both raster and tabular
formats into a common vector point representation. Raster formats are transformed using an affine transforma-
tion matrix (via the Rasterio package) to obtain coordinate representations.
One concern is the poor match between city administrative boundaries and the geographic extent of popula-
tion data. For example, the population data file for Spain extends beyond its national boundaries, encompassing
a large part of North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea. This issue poses significant usability challenges, particu-
larly when users are only interested in population figures at the neighborhood or precinct scale. To address this
challenge, we conduct extensive geospatial processing in two main steps: (1) geospatial tiling; and (2) providing
an updated geospatial query interface. First, we split larger administrative boundaries into uniform, fixed-size
spatial grids (e.g., the entire United States is split into 130 equally sized grid cells). Next, we compute the spatial
intersection between population data and their respective grids. Traditional spatial querying with Python geo-
spatial libraries is challenging due to the massive data size (>100 million data points). To address this challenge,
we employ the RapidsAI cuSpatial library to implement GPU-accelerated spatial query. As a technical caveat,
users seeking to re-implement this approach should set up a Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)
enabled Linux local distribution, as cuSpatial is not supported on MacOS or Windows systems. Finally, we
merge population data with their respective grids. We release the tiled population dataset and polygon shape-
files for 28 countries (except Singapore) under a CC BY 4.0 license at Figshare ([Link]
hare.22580806)60.

Street view imagery. To harmonise semantic classes across diverse urban contexts, we adopt a unified image
segmentation pipeline. More specifically, we utilise the ‘Mask2Former’ approach by61, a universal transformer
architecture applicable to a wide range of image segmentation tasks. Mask2Former is trained and validated
on the Mapillary Version 1.2 validation dataset17, comprising 65 semantic classes, and reports state-of-the-art
performance (MIoU = 63.2%). Mask2Former offers two main advantages for our purposes: (1) improved accu-
racy to pick out fine-grained semantic categories in images (previous models commonly ignore small regions
in images); and (2) lightweight and scalable computation. Readers interested in the specifics of Mask2Former
architecture and training are referred to61,62. To ensure consistency of daylight conditions for images taken in
different cities, we implement timestamp alignment by converting Unix epoch time (POSIX) to local timezones
and selecting images taken between 9 am and 5 pm.

Node-level integration. This section discusses steps taken to integrate and embed contextual and semantic
information into network nodes. A variety of spatial measures have been used to delimit catchment areas and
measure access coverage for urban locations. Popular methods include uniform euclidean63,64, network-based
distance65, network voronois66, and spatial modelling approaches9,39. For node attributes, we adopt a uni-
form euclidean approach, as it provides a consistent, straightforward, and extensible basis for integrating

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heterogeneous data sources across different network locations. Accordingly, we construct 100-metre euclidean
buffers for each network node and compute the spatial intersection with spatial targets (e.g., street view imagery
points, points of interest, and building footprints). In this situation, closely situated nodes might have overlap-
ping spatial areas, which aligns with the concept of urban catchment areas. This recognition reflects the shared
geographical context between neighboring nodes. To ensure spatial consistency and accurate distance compu-
tation, we project spatial entities into local coordinate reference systems (CRS). To support other use cases, we
provide an open source python package where users can generate euclidean buffers of arbitrary distance. As an
example, building footprint proportion corresponds to the ratio between the building area and the buffered area
around each node19.

Edge-level integration. To obtain indicators for network edges, we spatially interpolate spatial entities to their
nearest network edge29,65. More specifically, we adopt a two-step approach: (1) compute the distance between
each spatial point of interest and its proximate edges in the network, and (2) assign entities to the corresponding
edge with lowest distance. This makes intuitive sense as streets can be characterised by their adjacent amenities.
To account for remote edges (e.g., peripheral routes that are not located close to any amenities), we specify a
distance threshold of 50 metres. From a computational standpoint, a 50-metre radius effectively encompasses
nearby points of interest along edges due to their elongated nature. When we consider the urban context, it
makes intuitive sense to use a smaller distance threshold for edges, as edges are meant to encompass elements
that are immediately adjacent. For example, a significant portion of buildings are directly adjacent to an edge. For
buildings, we compute the distance between building centroids and their respective network edge. Accordingly,
we compute spatial indicators based on the set of elements assigned to each network edge.

Dashboard conceptualisation and development. The Urbanity network dataset52 is accompanied by an interac-
tive, web-based dashboard to support comparative analyses and visualisation of network metrics (see Figure 3).
Users can use the Urbanity dashboard to examine and compare urban networks through multiple scales–global,
city, and local. At the global scale, users can access a variety of network indicators’ distributions (such as building
footprint proportions and green view index) across cities worldwide. This functionality helps cities identify their
strengths and weaknesses, offering guidance for improvement. Expanding on the global overview, our dash-
board provides features to analyze and compare network structures at the city subzone level. As an example of
equitable planning, planners can pinpoint infrastructure gaps by evaluating population density and civic facility
availability across different subzones. Finally, users can delve into the local scale by directly accessing attrib-
utes of nodes and edges. A potential use case would be multi-criteria site assessment which can help planners
to quickly identify sites with various characteristics (e.g., low building footprint but high visual complexity).
Urbanity dashboard source code is available through an open MIT license ([Link]
urbdash).

Data Records
The Urbanity dataset52 consists of urban network data for 50 cities across seven regions–Europe (14); Asia (12);
North America (11); South America (7); Oceania (5); South Africa (1). We adopt a consistent data workflow to
create each city’s network data through the Urbanity Python package ([Link]
Each city’s network consists of two separate Geographic Javascript Object Notation (GeoJSON) files which cor-
respond to attributes and geometry for nodes and edges. Direct spatial representation of nodes and edges allows
for rapid visualisation of primal planar networks while also allowing for seamless conversion to popular network
formats (NetworkX or igraph). Nodes and edges are assigned unique IDs and retain their original OSM labels. A
complete list of node- and edge-level spatial indicators is provided in Table 1.
Indicators were selected and computed according to their perceived empirical importance in urban ana-
lytics literature. The dataset is hosted under a CC BY 4.0 license at Figshare ([Link]
are.22124219)52.

Technical Validation
In order to conduct meaningful comparative analyses of cities worldwide, the Urbanity dataset52 employs data
components that feature consistent global jurisdictional coverage. Numerous studies have previously examined
the validity and robustness of urban open data. Generally, the OSM community validates OSM data, as described
in their documentation ([Link] Significant efforts have been made to
evaluate the availability and quality of OSM data in areas such as road networks51,67–70, points of interest71, and
building footprints58,72–74. Likewise, several studies have assessed the quality and coverage of street view imagery
on crowdsourced platforms like Mapillary and KartaView59,75,76. The spatial accuracy of high-density population
maps has been systematically validated against population census data in a methodology paper57.
Notwithstanding, we employ a multi-level framework involving both automated and manual tests to improve
the consistency and reliability of network data components. This framework comprises visual cross-validation,
null value and outlier checking, systematic comparisons with available census data, and automated image suita-
bility evaluations, as detailed below.

Automatic population validation. In this section, we undertake a rigorous assessment of the Meta pop-
ulation dataset through a comprehensive process, comparing it against the well-established WorldPop urban
population dataset77. Over recent years, WorldPop has gained prominence as a leading open dataset, widely
utilised across numerous domains in urban research and decision-making–population health78,79, sustainable
development80,81, socioeconomics82. We opted to utilise the WorldPop dataset over comparable alternatives like
the Gridded Population of the World (GPW), Global Rural Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP), Global Human

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Fig. 3 Urbanity dashboard exploratory panels. Urbanity dashboard offers an interactive, user-friendly interface
for exploring urban network data without the need to code. Complementary panels provide insights into
various urban scales and features, incorporating popular methods for urban network data analysis. Sources
of the data samples: (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, Mapillary, and Meta. Basemap: OpenStreetMap and
Mapbox. (a) Global comparative analyses of cites across selected indicators. (b) Bivariate scatterplot of network
indicators across city subzones. (c) Univariate spatial distribution of aggregate values across city subzones.
(d) Urban network of Paris. (e) Gridded density plot of urban population distribution across Paris.

Settlement Layer-Population (GHS-POP), or LandScan Population database because of spatial resolution and
temporal frequency compatibility between the WorldPop dataset and the Meta population dataset.
Accordingly, we conduct a systematic comparative analysis of gridded population counts at the 100-metre reso-
lution between the Meta and WorldPop datasets. For the WorldPop dataset, we utilise a top-down approach which
employs building footprint constrained and United Nations national population-adjusted figures to disaggregate
the population into land cell grids ([Link] Our analysis encompasses 25
cities from our original dataset, representing diverse geographical regions. For each city, Table 2 enumerates statis-
tics such as mean absolute error, correlation, aggregate population proportion, and the percentage of binary corre-
spondence (zero population/population above zero) between the WorldPop and Meta population datasets. Similarly,
Figure 4 displays the spatial distribution of mean absolute error across 100-metre grid cells covering each city.
In general, although there are subtle distinctions, our empirical findings underscore a robust and consist-
ent convergence between the two datasets across a range of comparative metrics. Several noteworthy metrics
warrant careful consideration. For instance, the significant level of binary correspondence provides compelling
evidence that both datasets adeptly forecast the presence or absence of built-up areas within administrative city

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Indicator Node1 Edge2 Data Type Unit References3

Metric & Topological
Node Density Yes Integer Count Boeing32 and Huang et al.86
Street Length Yes Yes Decimal m Xue et al.3
Degree Yes Integer Count Prieto-Curiel et al.87
Clustering Coefficient Yes Decimal — Boeing49
Clustering Coefficient
Yes Decimal — Boeing49
(Weighted)
Closeness Centrality Yes Decimal — Ozuduru et al.88
Betweenness Centrality Yes Decimal — Kirkley et al.89
Eigenvector Centrality Yes Decimal — Agryzkov et al.13
Katz Centrality Yes Decimal — Curado et al.90
PageRank Yes Decimal — Jia et al.91
Building Morphology
Footprint Proportion (Total) Yes Yes Percentage m2 Asadi et al.92
Mean Area Yes Yes Decimal m 2
Hu et al.93
Area St. dev Yes Yes Decimal m 2
Li et al.94
Total Perimeter Yes Yes Decimal m2 Tikhonova & Beirao95
Mean Perimeter Yes Yes Decimal m2 Litardo et al.96
Perimeter St. dev Yes Yes Decimal m2 Biljecki & Chow19
Complexity Mean Yes Yes Decimal m2 Basaraner & Cetinkaya97
Complexity St. dev Yes Yes Decimal m2 Labetski et al.98
No. of Buildings Yes Yes Integer Count Liu et al.99
Population
Total Population Yes Yes Integer Count Szarka & Biljecki100
Women Yes Yes Integer Count Cerin et al.101
Men Yes Yes Integer Count Gauvin et al.102
Elderly (aged 60 + ) Yes Yes Integer Count Wang et al.103
Youth (15–24) Yes Yes Integer Count Ha & Thill104
Children (under 5) Yes Yes Integer Count Kruse et al.105
Points of Interest
Social Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Lucchini et al.106
Recreational Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Klinkhardt et al.107
Healthcare Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Weiss et al.108
Entertainment Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Liu et al.109
Civic Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Liu & Long110
Institutional Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Zhou & Yang111
Food Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Liu et al.112
Commercial Amenities Yes Yes Integer Count Wang et al.113
No. of Street View Images Yes Integer Count Hou & Biljecki59
Green View Index Yes Yes Decimal — Li114
Sky View Index Yes Yes Decimal — Middel et al.115
Building View Index Yes Yes Decimal — Ki & Lee116
Road View Index Yes Yes Decimal — Dong et al.117
Visual Complexity Index Yes Yes Decimal — Yap et al.44

Table 1. List of computed network spatial indicators. 1Node features derived from 100-metre euclidean buffers
and spatial feature aggregation. 2Edge features derived via linear interpolation and assignment of nearby spatial
entities to proximate edges. 3Recent articles that illustrate the empirical importance of the associated indicator
for various urban analytics use cases. 4To mitigate the constraints posed by SVI data limitations, we employ a
methodology of imputing estimates derived from geographically adjacent neighbors.

boundaries. Moreover, when we aggregate population estimates across urban boundaries, the results demon-
strate remarkable similarity.
Although there is generally a strong correlation at the grid cell level, it’s important to acknowledge the pres-
ence of some variability. This divergence can be attributed to the distinct methodologies employed in disaggre-
gating population data. In the case of the Meta dataset, population counts are directly attributed to building
footprints. Conversely, the WorldPop dataset employs a two-step process for population assignment: first, build-
ing footprints are predicted using a settlement growth model for buildings; subsequently, population is allocated
to grid cells identified as housing buildings or established settlements83.

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Binary Correspondence Meta WorldPop

City (Proportion) Population Population Correlation MAE1
Adelaide 0.754 1,279,450 1,334,155 0.785 4.293
Antwerp 0.711 1,158,770 1,057,246 0.543 6.738
Athens 0.859 2,508,459 2,935,090 0.669 22.936
Auckland 0.865 1,059,257 1,151,367 0.763 7.54
Austin 0.785 713,240 715,235 0.758 8.295
Bangkok 0.796 13,993,114 14,342,154 0.756 24.816
Budapest 0.914 2,002,245 1,826,055 0.54 12.141
Campinas 0.66 3,764,216 3,675,747 0.719 17.464
Chicago 0.926 3,444,824 3,402,691 0.772 10.008
Denver 0.893 1,641,215 1,646,064 0.775 6.531
Edinburgh 0.836 507,829 495,732 0.68 12.467
Glasgow 0.915 809,246 815,467 0.717 9.95
Hanoi 0.958 1,785,191 1,578,247 0.694 73.577
Madrid 0.837 5,678,730 5,023,775 0.666 24.01
Manila 0.951 15,730,416 15,324,991 0.788 84.387
Melbourne 0.982 1,905,490 1,967,284 0.758 6.736
Milan 0.901 1,500,331 1,498,404 0.834 18.84
Paris 0.984 3,258,001 2,922,765 0.519 61.07
Phoenix 0.884 2,450,696 2,444,093 0.779 5.671
San Jose 0.944 745,321 695,970 0.706 19.425
Santiago 0.886 6,807,438 6,351,675 0.805 25.765
Seattle 0.916 698,244 687,313 0.768 7.845
Singapore 0.813 5,525,543 5,341,286 0.855 46.614
Taichung 0.692 3,217,240 3,137,196 0.824 16.441
Taipei 0.796 4,469,983 4,382,751 0.787 54.235

Table 2. Comparison of Meta and WorldPop population datasets across 100-metre grid cells. Cities sorted
alphabetically. 1MAE—Mean Absolute Error. Corresopnds to the population count difference between the
WorldPop and Meta population datasets across 100-metre grid cells for each city’s administrative boundary.

Automatic SVI assessment. Crowdsourced SVI imagery relies on the contributions of numerous volun-
teers, which can result in significant variations in image quality59. Consequently, it is crucial to evaluate the suita-
bility of these images, as they could adversely affect segmentation results if left unaddressed. We assess the images
based on three criteria: (1) perspective; (2) daylight visibility; and (3) occlusion.
People contribute different types of images to crowdsourced street-level imagery, including images taken
from different angles such as front-facing, side-facing, overhead, and panoramic84. However, segmentation
models are typically trained on front-facing imagery. Therefore, other perspective views can skew segmentation
results due to object appearance distortion. To manage image perspective, we first determine the orientation of
all network edges and subsequently exclude images with an orientation angle deviation exceeding 20 degrees
(selected following visual inspection) from their respective network edges. To ensure adequate daylight visibil-
ity, we narrow the image set to those captured between 9 am and 5 pm (local time), using image metadata. In
some rare instances, we encountered images with severe occlusion, such as a street view obstructed by a large
bus or street furniture. To tackle this issue, we have devised a post-segmentation heuristic that utilises visual
complexity (information cross entropy on semantic classes) to identify and eliminate problematic images. This
approach works intuitively by detecting images with low semantic information (e.g., where the majority of pixels
correspond to a vehicle). Figure 5 displays examples of problematic images and their respective visual complex-
ity values for Zurich, Switzerland. Based on our experiments, we determined that a cross entropy threshold of
1.0 is effective in filtering out such images.
Last but not least, where there are many images within a tile, we reduce computational workload by down-
sampling the available pool of images. More specifically, we apply random proportional sampling (10%) to each
tile and set a minimum image count threshold of 250. In total, we segmented approximately 4 million images
spanning 50 cities out of an initial selection of 97 million images. An overview of the image screening and selec-
tion process is enumerated for each city (see Table 3).
Automated checks for construct validity. To ensure construct validity at the level of individual data com-
ponents, we employ a series of automated checks. For buildings, we programmatically validate each building foot-
print entry and use a procedural script to merge multiple polygons into a single one. For networks, we eliminate
self-connections, duplicate nodes, and edges. Additionally, we verify that the network is a fully connected subgraph.
For urban population data, we systematically compare aggregate figures with available census data to confirm the
reliability of our estimates. To address the integration of various spatial data layers at different scales, we utilise an

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Fig. 4 Comparing WorldPop and Meta population datasets using a spatial 100-metre gridded analysis across
25 cities. Highlighting variations in aggregated population counts across administrative boundaries in 25 cities
between the WorldPop and Meta Datasets. In the heatmap, regions indicating a higher population count in
the Meta dataset compared to WorldPop are visualized in red, while areas where WorldPop predicts a greater
population count than the Meta dataset are represented in blue. Data Source: Meta and WorldPop. Basemap: (c)
CARTO.

Fig. 5 Distribution of visual complexity within streetview images in Zurich. Visual complexity corresponds to
information cross entropy of semantic classes in each image. We show the visual complexity distribution for the
entire image set of Zurich, Switzerland (N = 18,565). Images with low visual complexity reveal little semantic
information on streetscapes and are removed. Source of imagery: Mapillary.

interactive and visually-oriented data processing pipeline to maintain spatial consistency. Each subsequent data
layer undergoes visual cross-validation against its target boundary before we proceed with any spatial computation.

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City Adelaide Amsterdam Antwerp Athens Atlanta Auckland Austin Barcelona

Initial 2,802,291 286,395 5,402,430 1,537,459 625,164 353,156 2,162,429 189,797
Excluded
Alignment 1,075,263 120,273 2,655,748 1,011,414 177,073 134,228 1,075,652 90,673
Daylight 888,111 49,600 1,293,082 123,986 184,432 140,102 579,929 31,642
Sampling 730,387 92,623 1,268,032 357,115 233,294 61,247 451,865 57,234
Final Set 108,530 23,899 185,568 44,944 30,365 17,579 54,983 10,248
City Belo Horizonte Berlin Bern Brisbane Bogota Boston Brisbane Budapest
Initial 1,902,895 9,182,485 93,118 3,009,352 3,379,425 997,005 263,839 4,476,229
Excluded
Alignment 937,815 5,670,429 43,448 1,475,597 2,125,875 224,526 83,826 1,626,411
Daylight 342,504 965,366 14,612 892,280 408,076 265,494 118,196 809,197
Sampling 550,240 2,261,792 29,382 562,938 757,650 452,731 41,399 1,826,857
Final Set 72,336 284,898 5,676 78,537 87,824 54,254 20,418 213,764
City Buenos Aires Campinas Chiang Mai Chicago Denver Edinburgh Glasgow Hanoi
Initial 1,924,268 3,434,931 1,031,741 1,299,032 715,003 393,155 141,249 245,814
Excluded
Alignment 1,313,143 1,398,166 403,326 392,735 174,572 166,563 54,996 161,716
Daylight 200,061 530,400 329,385 478,447 200,910 70,200 14,762 55,664
Sampling 332,076 1,329,840 266,639 367,300 294,617 124,503 53,872 24,882
Final Set 78,988 176,525 32,391 60,550 44,904 31,889 17,619 3,552
City Houston Johannesburg Kowloon Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico Miami
Initial 1,111,777 1,861,856 121,673 1,823,540 524,564 2,872,774 5,265,189 195,989
Excluded
Alignment 132,394 1,229,335 74,692 1,233,384 212,099 690,406 2,945,509 60,178
Daylight 222,493 138,620 17,325 142,977 94,249 586,015 588,918 32,637
Sampling 658,793 416,163 25,423 400,711 160,571 1,432,388 1,550,496 91,368
Final Set 98,097 77,738 4,233 46,468 57,645 163,965 180,266 11,806
City Milan Paris Phoenix San Jose Santiago Sao Paulo Sapporo Seattle
Initial 1,035,534 275,138 5,573,756 129,054 1,326,959 8,729,024 345,355 2,219,755
Excluded
Alignment 370,120 128,857 1,504,118 56,746 880,883 4,038,022 91,713 767,680
Daylight 307,417 68,199 2,058,236 39,656 101,677 1,166,079 93,805 525,040
Sampling 318,062 64,471 1,792,031 27,456 291,824 3,150,399 128,706 829,213
Final Set 39,935 13,611 219,371 5,196 52,575 374,524 31,131 97,822
City Singapore Sydney Taichung Taipei Tokyo Toronto Washington Yokohama
Initial 913,358 1,891,064 428,610 1,689,293 3,610,395 1,290,948 5,623,925 1,436,846
Excluded
Alignment 396,483 1,192,311 168,850 1,197,065 1,754,845 299,357 1,404,115 259,128
Daylight 99,205 433,596 91,065 276,056 402,605 221,769 1,628,221 232,547
Sampling 367,934 170,299 122,749 188,950 1,299,839 673,961 2,331,651 847,190
Final Set 49,736 94,858 45,946 27,222 153,106 95,861 259,938 97,981
City Zagreb Zurich Total (50 cities)
Initial 656,242 333,735 97,135,015
Excluded
Alignment 188,262 125,521 43,995,541
Daylight 155,157 60,402 18,770,404
Sampling 267,878 129,247 30,266,288
Final Set 44,945 18,565 4,102,782

Table 3. SVI pre-processing process for each city.

Usage Notes
Urbanity network data can be utilised for a wide range of descriptive and predictive urban network analytical
tasks. Descriptive use cases include understanding linear associations between network indicators, multi-criteria
location analysis, examining the similarity of contextual and semantic attributes across scales, and facilitating
comparative analyses between various cities and their neighborhoods. Users can access many of these descrip-
tive use cases through the Urbanity dashboard. Using Tokyo as an example, Figure 6 presents a multiscalar
visualisation of various network indicators.

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Fig. 6 Multiscalar descriptive analysis of network indicators. Network indicators can be used for multi-
scalar descriptive analyses of cities. (a) Comparative analysis of the distributions of building footprint
proportions across network nodes with a 100-meter catchment area in ten cities. (b) Visualizing the spatial
distribution of urban context and semantics layers at various levels of aggregation in Tokyo. Sources of the
data samples: (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, Mapillary, and Meta.

Network data can be incorporated into existing data science workflows with minimal pre-processing. For
instance, city planners can combine population and POI indicators with local mobility data to investigate net-
work accessibility to various urban amenities. Urban researchers can also develop better contextual and semantic
understanding of networks by examining how attributes change across network structure. An example use case
could be to employ network assortativity methods85 to evaluate distribution of urban greenery throughout the
urban fabric. Network data can also be readily extended for various urban network predictive tasks. For graph
machine learning use cases, users can easily transform the dataset to popular graph deep learning frameworks
such as PyTorch Geometric (PyG) or Deep Graph Library (DGL). Users can extend their analysis by combining
the network data with other local information, such as socio-economic indicators derived from census or local
surveys. We support use case development with code notebooks ([Link]
All source code, example notebooks, datasets, data derivatives, and technical validation code are released
under open source licenses to facilitate reproducibility and use case extension. Data files are provided separately
for each city and include feature sets for both network nodes and edges. Our data set is released in accessible
formats to facilitate usability across different analytical environments and pipelines. Network data are released
in the popular Geographic Javascript Object Notation (GeoJSON) format which can be easily loaded and visual-
ised in various open geospatial environments such as QGIS (vector layer), R (simple features), and Python
(GeoPandas). We provide example notebooks to show how users can load and visualise urban network data in
our package ([Link] Non-spatial data such as aggregated statistics for cities
and subzones are provided in common comma separated values (CSV) format. Alternatively, we also provide a
dashboard interface for users to explore global urban network data set.
The Urbanity network dataset52 is an ongoing global data effort to capture important contextual and semantic
network characteristics of global cities. Till date, we have aimed to cover numerous cities across different geo-
graphical regions. Nonetheless, it is inevitable that we might have left out certain cities that are of interest. In the
context of urban analytics studies, the primary concern often revolves around the availability of data. Focusing
crowdsourced volunteered geographic information efforts on enhancing street view image coverage in cities
across the global south would represent a significant stride towards improving overall coverage. In the mean-
time, subject to data availability, users can submit a request to have their city of interest included at the following
discussions page ([Link]

Code availability
Urbanity Python package source code is hosted under an open source MIT license ([Link]
winstonyym/urbanity). Urbanity dashboard is generated with Dash version 2.7.1. with open source code (https://
[Link]/winstonyym/urbdash).

Received: 18 May 2023; Accepted: 16 September 2023;

Published: xx xx xxxx

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Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the open-source community. We thank the members of
the NUS Urban Analytics Lab for the discussions. The first author thankfully acknowledges the NUS Graduate
Research Scholarship granted by the National University of Singapore. This research is part of the project Large-
scale 3D Geospatial Data for Urban Analytics, which is supported by the National University of Singapore under
the Start Up Grant R-295-000-171-133.

Author contributions
Winston Yap (1) Conceptualisation and Design; (2) Software and Dashboard Development; (3) Data Acquisition,
Generation, and Analysis; (4) Data Testing and Validation; (5) Use Case Development; (6) Manuscript Drafting.
Filip Biljecki (1) Conceptualisation and Design; (2) Data Testing and Validation; (3) Use Case Development; (4)
Manuscript Drafting; (5) Research Supervision; (6) Project Funding.

Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information
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