UrbanFootprint raises $11.5M Series A to help businesses and cities plan for future climate, housing and mobility challenges

Nearly 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. Therefore, it is no longer just governments that need to understand cities — business are turning to urban planning for key insights too. Enter  UrbanFootprint, a developer of location intelligence and urban planning software that empowers anyone to build smarter with industry-leading data, mapping, and analysis. Both government and business are turning to UrbanFootprint as the ultimate tool to understand cities — everything from where people live, work, and commute, to zoning, physical and environmental conditions, infrastructure and more.

Today, UrbanFootprint announced it has raised $11.5 million in Series A to advance its offerings and grow its customer base of cities, urban planners, and companies across the energy, mobility, and real estate sectors. The round was led by Valo Ventures, alongside continued investment from Social Capital and new partner Radicle Impact and also joined by early investor Social Capital.

Founded in 2014 by Joe Distefano and Peter Calthorpe, UrbanFootprint  is a location intelligence software for smart cities. Its cloud-based Urban Intelligence software delivers insight to government, enterprise, and academic institutions in urban planning, finance, mobility, sustainability, policy making, healthcare, and disaster preparedness. UrbanFootprint streamlines urban planning and mobility decisions with actionable data for all U.S. locations. Map, measure, and analyze current and future land use scenarios with thousands of cleaned and curated datasets.

By combining data, analysis, and advanced scenario planning, UrbanFootprint dramatically improves the toolset available to cities and urban planners to design more sustainable, equitable and resilient communities. It also supports mobility, energy, insurance, real estate, and other emerging and established industries with a comprehensive platform of actionable insights and ground-level data to navigate cities and urban markets. For instance, UrbanFootprint can help businesses plan their expansions, identify where to devote resources, and understand current and future economic, social and environmental implications across markets.

“Businesses across every major industry are realizing that to succeed in cities, you need to understand them,” said Joe DiStefano, CEO of UrbanFootprint. “By creating easy access to essential planning data and analyses, UrbanFootprint offers a new solution for anyone focused on cities or urban markets to build more efficiently and sustainably.”

“We are extremely grateful for the incredible support we’ve received from experienced investors, Valo Ventures, Social Capital, and Radicle Impact, who bring deep experience and purpose in creating a brighter, sustainable future for all,” said Peter Calthorpe, Co-Founder of UrbanFootprint. “Their expertise will be invaluable as we continue to scale our platform and bring even more urban insights to cities, urban planners, and companies working and competing in urban markets.”

Compared to traditional urban planning tools that are siloed, costly and time-consuming, UrbanFootprint streamlines the process through a single collaborative platform that makes it easy to map and evaluate existing conditions, build and test future scenarios, and analyze an unprecedented array of relevant impacts. The platform serves up thousands of essential data sets covering land use and real estate, transportation systems, environmental resources, climate and hazard risks, health, and socio-demographic characteristics. Models track scenario performance in real-time and the industry’s most advanced user interface enables planners and enterprises to search and evaluate nearly all U.S. locations with ease.

UrbanFootprint’s built-in data and toolset allows users to quickly understand critical urban insights like climate and hazard impacts and accessibility to transportation hubs or points of interest.