1. Data + Evidence
Centralise your data library
- Connect and organise your spatial datasets in one shared library.
- Link third-party data feeds and APIs to query your evidence base alongside your spatial data.
City Planning Platform
Plan thriving cities with data, not guesswork.
Giraffe City is a data-driven policy, design and engagement platform for planners and urban designers.
- Dwellings
- 1,179
- People
- 2,712
- Jobs
- 1,142
- Open space
- 14%
- Residential
- Mixed use
- Employment
- Civic
- Open space
Trusted by
- Inner West Council
- Canterbury Bankstown Council
- WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage
- Government Architect NSW
The problem
City making is hard. Fragmented tools and teams make it harder.
Planning frameworks are hard to visualise
Without a clear view of your controls, it’s hard to know which levers to pull to meet housing and growth targets.
Testing built form is slow
Creating controls and development envelopes by hand means fewer options get explored before decisions are made.
Static plans get misread
PDFs and 2D maps leave room for misinterpretation, so communities and stakeholders can’t see what will actually change.
Solutions
See your whole planning framework
Encode and visualise your policy, then test controls against housing targets, infrastructure and environmental constraints.
Test built form in minutes
Create envelopes and compare the capacity, feasibility and impacts of each scenario, from city scale to parcel level.
Show what will change, and why
Shared 3D models make proposals tangible for communities and stakeholders.
How Giraffe helps you reach confident planning decisions, faster
2. Digitise
Digitise your planning framework
- Model your planning controls with purpose-built tools, or give Giraffe AI your written controls to codify and visualise.
- Layer your controls over zoning, heritage and constraints data, so everyone works from one live source of truth.
3. Test
Test policy before you commit
- Test planning policy and urban design controls against housing targets, infrastructure and environmental constraints.
- See capacity, yield and impact numbers update instantly as you adjust controls.
4. Design
Shape better places at every scale
- Turn policy into clear built form controls, development guidelines and envelopes.
- Develop master plans for precincts and growth areas, with live calculations as you refine each option.
5. Engage
Bring your stakeholders with you
- Present proposals in an interactive 3D format so stakeholders and communities can see what will change.
- Share live models and reports instead of static PDFs, so everyone works from the same plan.
The apps
A growing ecosystem of apps to support city makers.
Included apps
In the box
- GIS tools
- Spatial filtering
- Import and export of all spatial files
- Assumptions engine
- Scenario engine
- GIS tools
- Spatial filtering
- Import and export of all spatial files
- Assumptions engine
- Scenario engine
- GIS tools
- Spatial filtering
- Import and export of all spatial files
- Assumptions engine
- Scenario engine
And a growing ecosystem of paid and free apps
Hover an app to see what it does.
Case study · NSW Government
Land iQ
The NSW Government has built a suite of Apps in the Giraffe ecosystem to help planning and property professionals make faster, smarter decisions. It is a powerful digital tool for strategically evaluating land use across NSW, leveraging the Giraffe platform to visualise and analyse data.
$15msoft cost reduction
10,000ssites assessed
“Rather than paying a consultant, we’re able to generate it in-house in a matter of hours and days”Leon WalkerDeputy-Secretary, NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure
Where Cities deploy Giraffe
01
Strategic Planning
Find sites, confirm viability, model yields, and prep for the investment committee.
02
Built Form Guidelines
Move from regional investment thesis to viable opportunities in minutes.
03
Policy intent and testing
Determine commercial feasibility in hours, not weeks, by reducing reliance on consultants.
04
Land Use Capacity
Qualify sites with confidence, test 20 scenarios in record time, and run your numbers in real time.
05
Master Planning
Find sites for solar and battery projects, evaluate constraints, and compare scenarios in one place.
06
Stakeholder Engagement
Plan large-scale developments, explore different land use scenarios, and evaluate their feasibility.
Pricing
Teams*
US$1,500/user/year
- Packaged access to the urban planning apps
- Shared billing
- Shared editing on projects
- Shared content and library templates
- Advanced features, including private apps
- Viewers are free
No trial for Teams: create your account from the admin menu after signing up.
Start nowCustom onboarding
US$2,00010 hours of our time
- A custom template and usages
- Custom onboarding training sessions
Managed service
Additional support
- Upload your parcel data, with custom joined attributes
- Upload your city's 3D model
- Data work, combined datasets, custom portals
Equipped for enterprises
Enterprise-grade security. Your data is protected by industry-leading standards. Read about security →
Explore the Giraffe ecosystem
Bring your development process into the AI era
A-601 · Requests for information
Questions councils ask.
RFI-01We already have a GIS team. Where does this fit?
Alongside them, not instead of them. GIS answers what is there; Giraffe City is for testing what could be, and what a control would produce if you wrote it. The core data structure is GeoJSON, so your layers come in and the outputs go back out to the systems you already run.
RFI-02How is this different from our planning portal or assessment system?
Those are systems of record: they hold what was lodged and what was decided. They are not built to ask whether the control was the right one. Giraffe City is the working model in front of them, where a scenario is tested, a precinct is designed, and an application can be checked against the envelope it is supposed to sit in.
RFI-03Can we use it for community engagement?
Yes, and it is one of the strongest reasons councils use it. Share the live project and residents open the real model, the massing in its real context with the numbers visible, rather than an artist’s impression. The same works for briefing councillors, a panel or a state agency.
RFI-04How long until our team is useful in it?
Planners draw a real precinct in their first session. It borrows its conventions from tools your team already uses, and it runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install and nothing to requisition first.
RFI-05Where does the data come from, and can we trust the numbers?
Thousands of searchable layers across hundreds of cities, including parcels, zoning and contours, plus your own data and direct connections to internal sources for enterprise deployments. The assumptions are yours and stay visible, so every number traces back to a decision somebody made on purpose.
RFI-06What about procurement, security and hosting?
Enterprise deployments cover SSO, audit logs, an SLA, bespoke datasets and custom apps, with the security documentation procurement will ask for. Teams often start on a single precinct to prove the value before any of that begins.