Esri Urban Observatory (2015)

Inspired by the launch of Esri’s Urban Observatory website (www.urbanobservatory.org) in 2013, GCRO worked with Esri South Africa and the Ekurhuleni and Tshwane metropolitan municipalities (Johannesburg was already represented on the website), to contribute to the Urban Observatory website. The Urban Observatory website enables the comparison of three cities selected from a list of international cities currently available on the website such as Delhi, Johannesburg, London, New York and Rio de Janeiro, in three side by side panels. Spatial indicator data comparisons across the three selected cities are possible in five themes, namely work, movement, people, public and live systems. According to Esri, “The vision of the Urban Observatory is to foster conversations by visualizing physical, demographic, and cultural patterns of cities.” Cities are encouraged to participate in the freely available service and Esri South Africa has offered to assist with the project. The main aim of this project was to therefore provide an international comparison between different cities internationally and within the GCR. Data was collected from the respective cities and, with the help of Esri South Africa, uploaded to the international Urban Observatory website using the specified template. The addition of Ekurhuleni and Tshwane to the Urban Observatory website, placed the Gauteng City-Region and its cities on an international indicator stage, and expanded access to Gauteng City-Regional data, at no cost to GCRO or its stakeholders.