The Urban Toolkit is a growing ecosystem of open-source tools, frameworks, knowledge bases, and methods designed to simplify and accelerate urban data visualization and analysis. It enables researchers, experts, and developers to explore complex urban phenomena through high-level visual grammars, map-centric interactions, and curated datasets.
Check here for a list of papers and tools, and here for our GitHub page.
News & Updates
- Three papers accepted at IEEE VIS 2025!Happy to share that our group has had three full papers accepted at IEEE VIS 2025! Urbanite, led by UIC PhD candidate Gustavo Moreira, introduces a framework for human–AI collaboration in urban visual analytics, using a dataflow-based model that lets users specify intent at multiple levels, aligning specification, process, and… Read more: Three papers accepted at IEEE VIS 2025!
- Our work featured on UIC TodayThe past decade has seen a flood of data about cities, information with the potential to make communities cleaner, healthier and more livable. University of Illinois Chicago scientists will play a key role in realizing that potential through a new computing platform they are building for researchers and the public… Read more: Our work featured on UIC Today
- OSCUR funded by the National Science Foundation!The Open-Source Cyberinfrastructure for Urban Computing Research (OSCUR) will create a cohesive ecosystem of tools and resources designed to transform city data into actionable knowledge. This multi-institutional collaboration is supported by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, with $1.75 million allocated to UIC. The project includes researchers… Read more: OSCUR funded by the National Science Foundation!
- “Assessing the Landscape of Toolkits, Frameworks, and Authoring Tools for Urban Visual Analytics Systems” accepted to Computers & Graphics!In this paper, we have reviewed 135 works to assess the extent to which current open-source toolkits, frameworks, and authoring tools can effectively support the development of components tailored to urban visual analytics, identifying strengths and limitations in addressing the unique challenges posed by urban data. The paper can be… Read more: “Assessing the Landscape of Toolkits, Frameworks, and Authoring Tools for Urban Visual Analytics Systems” accepted to Computers & Graphics!
- Curio accepted at IEEE VIS 2024!The “Curio: A Dataflow-Based Framework for Collaborative Urban Visual Analytics” paper was accepted to IEEE VIS 2024. Curio is a framework for collaborative urban visual analytics that uses a dataflow model with multiple abstraction levels (code, grammar, GUI elements) to facilitate collaboration across the design and implementation of visual analytics… Read more: Curio accepted at IEEE VIS 2024!
- “The State of the Art in Visual Analytics for 3D Urban Data” accepted at EuroVis 2024!Urbanization has amplified the importance of three-dimensional structures in urban environments for a wide range of phenomena that are of significant interest to diverse stakeholders. With the growing availability of 3D urban data, numerous studies have focused on developing visual analysis techniques tailored to the unique characteristics of urban environments.… Read more: “The State of the Art in Visual Analytics for 3D Urban Data” accepted at EuroVis 2024!
Dataflow frameworks
Curio: Dataflow-based framework for collaboration in urban visual analytics
Urbanite: Dataflow-based framework for Human-AI alignment in urban visual analytics
Grammars & toolkits
UTK: Grammar for urban visualizations
StreetWeave: Grammar for street-overlaid visualizations
Knowledge bases & guidelines
VA-Blueprint: LLM-generated knowledge base for visual analytics system components
Survey on 3D urban visual analytics
Others:
– Landscape of tools for urban visual analytics
– Comparison of visualizations for 3D urban analytics
AI & ML
– Deep Umbra: Generative approach for city-scale shadow computation
– Tile2Net: Automatic generation of sidewalk from aerial imagery
– CitySurfaces: Segmentation of sidewalk surfaces from street-level images