City Explorer
A hosted web explorer for your place — layers, storylines and points of interest anyone can navigate from a link, on any device, with no install and no training.
Services
City engagement and planning, built on a living twin.
Urban Decoders builds the models, tools and platforms that let people understand a place before it exists — twinned from real data, tested through planning, and put in front of the residents, buyers and authorities whose decision it is.
At a glance
Hover a card to see what's inside.
Engagement
Flip →Community Engagement
Consultation tools that let residents explore the plan and comment in place.
Planning
Flip →Planning & Masterplanning
Massing, density, phasing and daylight tested in 3D before committee.
Digital Twins
Flip →Digital Twins
Live replicas of buildings and districts — as planned, or as the real city runs today.
Immersive Experiences
Flip →Immersive Experiences
VR, AR and real-time walkthroughs — headset, media table or a browser link.
Cards flip on hover or keyboard focus, with the full description shown in a flat fallback for reduced-motion.
Digital Twins
A model that keeps up with the plan.
We build living twins of a building, campus, community or city district — BIM, GIS, survey and live sensor data bound into one navigable model, correctly georeferenced and kept current as the plan moves. One shared source of truth for the design team, the client and the authority — and, for the city that already exists, a base the live feeds plug straight into.
Scope this serviceCity scale
District twin
City context
Manchester · 3D tiles
Live data
Synced to plan
Drag or scroll horizontally · past project stills
Live City Twins
The city as it runs, not just as it's drawn.
Most twins stop at the plan. Ours can carry the live city on top: we connect the APIs and feeds a place already produces — traffic counters and signal systems, bus and rail real-time data, CCTV analytics, air-quality monitors, footfall sensors, energy and building-management systems — and visualise them in the real 3D place, updating as it happens.
For a council or operator that means one screen where the whole town is legible: where the traffic is, which routes are late, where people are gathering, what the air is doing — and the history behind it, so patterns become decisions.
Scope this service
Operations
One screen, whole town
Traffic & transport
Counters · signals · GTFS-RT
Sensors & IoT
Air · footfall · energy
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What we connect
Open and operator APIs — TfGM / Bee Network, Network Rail Darwin, DEFRA AURN, council traffic (SCOOT/UTMC) and CCTV systems, LoRaWAN and building-management sensors, and your own databases.
What you get
A georeferenced 3D twin with live layers, a place-management dashboard on top, alerts on thresholds, and a time-scrubber to replay any day. Web, media table or ops-room wall.
Handled properly
CCTV is processed to anonymised counts and flows — no faces stored. Every feed sits under the data owner's terms, and the platform is built for public-sector procurement, security and audit.
Immersive Experiences
Walk the place before it exists.
Real-time experiences built on game engines: guided VR journeys, AR overlays on site or on a physical model, and self-guided walkthroughs that open from a link on any device. Delivered as a headset piece, a media-table installation or a web build — usually all three from one model.
Scope this serviceVR journey
Guided flythrough
Media table
Explore the plan
Web build
No headset needed
Drag or scroll horizontally · past project stills
Planning & Masterplanning
Test the scheme before you defend it.
Massing, density, phasing, daylight, views, wind and transit access modelled against real context and compared option by option. Verified views and accurate visual impact material for the application — so the case you take to committee is evidence, not artwork.
Scope this serviceOptions
Massing studies
Verified views
Visual impact
Phasing
Delivery sequence
Drag or scroll horizontally · past project stills
Try it
See Arki Engine
Test density like we do — live.
A toy version of our masterplan configurator, running right here. Drag the sliders and watch the scheme — and its numbers — regenerate. The full engine runs in Unreal, on your real site.
Masterplan Configurator
Plot area—
GFA achieved—
FAR achieved—
Buildings—
Tallest—
Site coverage—
Green space—
Drag to rotate
A simplified browser demo — indicative geometry only. The production configurator adds parking, set-backs, daylight and cost models.
Community Engagement
Consultation people actually take part in.
Public-facing platforms that let residents explore the proposal from their own street, compare it against what's there today, and leave comments pinned to the place they're talking about. Everything is logged and exportable, so the consultation report writes itself — and objections arrive informed.
Scope this serviceIn the room
Drop-in sessions
Street level
Before & after
Feedback
Comments in place
Drag or scroll horizontally · past project stills
Try it
Leave a comment on the plan.
This is how consultation feels on our platforms. Click anywhere on the aerial, say your piece, pick a stance — and watch the record build. In the real thing, every pin is logged, mapped and exportable for the consultation report.
A demo — comments live only on this page and are never saved or sent. The production platform adds moderation, themes, exports and a full audit trail.
GIS, City Data & Context
Every model needs a real place to sit in.
Terrain, parcels, transport networks, planning constraints and open city data, pulled together from GIS and public records into one clean context model — georeferenced to a stated CRS, so what you build sits exactly where it belongs. The ground truth every accurate twin, application and visualisation depends on.
Scope this service
GIS
Base layers
Terrain
Site context
Constraints
Planning overlays
Drag or scroll horizontally · past project stills
Products
Things we build on top of the twin.
Once a place is twinned, the same model drives everything people actually touch — in the room, on the web, and long after the launch.
Media Table
A large-format interactive table for the sales suite, exhibition or committee room — the plan as something a group can stand around, drive together and argue over.
Place Management Platform
A live dashboard on the twin — traffic, transport, CCTV counts, air quality, occupancy and footfall in one view, so whoever runs the place can see how it actually performs.
VR Experiences
Guided headset journeys through the scheme for launches, exhibitions and public events — the closest anyone gets to walking the place before it exists.
Gamified Learning
Game-engine tools that teach a place — school programmes, public exhibitions and training that make planning and the built environment something people want to explore.
Installations & Kiosks
Visitor-centre installations, wayfinding kiosks and projected pieces — permanent fixtures that keep telling the story of a place long after opening day.
Engagement models
Ways to work with the studio.
Launch Pack
On request / project
A single asset done exceptionally well.
- One 3D web tour or render suite
- 360° panoramas + hero stills
- Hosted & launch-ready
Most requested
Twin Program
On request / engagement
Capture, twin and stage a full development.
- GIS context + real-time digital twin
- VR journey + cinematic film
- Sales-team training + 6-month sync
Enterprise Centre
Custom
A permanent visitor experience space, end to end.
- Spatial design + hardware install
- VR headset + touch-table content
- Ongoing content & twin maintenance
Every engagement is scoped to your project. Tell us what you're building and we'll come back with a tailored proposal.
Start your project
Ready to scope your project?
Send us the plans. We'll recommend the right mix of tour, twin and experience — and a timeline to launch.