Plan sustainable urban growth with PIVOT

PIVOT is a web-based, participatory decision-support platform that helps cities explore population-growth scenarios, climate migration, and hazard exposure. Practitioners and community members can inspect multi-source city data, compare with peer regions, and co-design building-placement plans that surface trade-offs and opportunities.

Coverage: United States, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania

Use the buttons to zoom to each region

What you can do with PIVOT

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City-scale explorer

View current conditions (demographics, housing, tree canopy) and climate stressors (heat, flood, precipitation).

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Scenario planning

Test status-quo vs. targeted strategies (e.g., reduce hazard exposure, expand tree cover, mitigate gentrification).

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Participatory inputs

Community feedback and practitioner priorities inform where and how development is placed.

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Transparent data

Fuses building-footprints with census & municipal records; shows methods and provenance inline.

Data

PIVOT combines open data and partner datasets. All layers list provenance, spatial resolution, and version dates so practitioners can validate and reproduce analyses.

Building footprints

  • High-resolution imagery & QA/QC
  • Updated regularly
  • Parcel & zoning joins

Population & housing

  • Census/ACS indicators
  • Income, tenure, demographics
  • Peer-region comparisons

Climate hazards

  • Projected heat & precipitation
  • Flood risk surfaces
  • Extreme-events context

Urban form & nature

  • Tree canopy & heat islands
  • Transit & amenities
  • Vacancy and redevelopment

Developers & Partners

Derek Van Berkel
Derek Van Berkel
Project Lead
Nilay Gautam
Nilay Gautam
Data Science
Xiaohao Yang
Xiaohao Yang
Geospatial & Computer Vision
David Grace
David Grace
Engineering
Yixin Hu
Yixin Hu
Modeling & QA/QC
Giang Duong
Giang Duong
UX & Community

Overview video

Get in touch

Interested in piloting PIVOT, contributing data, or co-designing features? We’d love to talk.