City Search
An interactive map that turns official community data into a clear picture before you move, buy or invest
Researching a new community means piecing data together from a dozen sources
Anyone deciding where to move, buy property or invest has to hunt down statistics on the local economy, safety, schools and amenities from scattered, inconsistent sources, then work out how to compare them.
SOLUTION
One interactive map, official data, one profile per community
We designed and built a web platform where every community has its own profile, rated across metrics like local economy, entertainment and community health, with free and detailed tiers depending on how deep someone needs to go.
RESULT
Live, and used for exactly the decisions it was built for
City Search launched and is live today, giving people considering a move, purchase or investment a single place to compare communities properly.
6 months
Brief to launch
At a glance
Sector: Retail and consumer.
Platforms: Web.
What we did: Product design, UX and UI design, full development.
Timeline: 6 months.
Client: City Search.
The challenge
Moving somewhere new, buying a property or investing in one all come down to the same question: what’s this community actually like? Answering that properly means pulling together economic data, safety statistics, entertainment options and dozens of other indicators from sources that were never designed to be compared side by side. City Search set out to replace that scattered research process with one interactive map, backed by official, continuously updated statistics.
What we designed
We built an interactive map with a free exploration mode, so anyone can browse and look at the data that interests them, alongside a filtering option for people who already know what they’re looking for. Every search returns a community profile split into two layers: a Community Highlight Pane that’s free to everyone, and a Detailed Community Highlight Pane behind a subscription, with the full dataset and a downloadable report. Communities are rated across metrics like local economy, entertainment and community health, and users can drill into any single indicator or compare multiple communities side by side.
Results
City Search launched and is live today at city-search.co.uk, giving people a single, data-backed way to compare communities before making one of the bigger decisions in their life.
Frequently asked
Why split community data into a free and a paywalled tier?
Because not everyone needs the same depth. Free exploration lets anyone browse and get a real sense of a community before committing to anything. The detailed tier, with the full dataset and a downloadable report, is for people far enough into a decision that they need to go deeper, so the paywall sits at a natural point in someone’s research rather than blocking basic access.
How does the side-by-side comparison feature work?
Users can pull up multiple community profiles at once and compare them across the same set of indicators, rather than opening one tab per community and trying to hold the differences in their head. It turns research that would normally take a spreadsheet into something visual.
Why build this as an interactive map instead of a simple search tool?
Because location is the whole point. A list of results loses the geographic context that actually matters when someone’s deciding where to live or invest, what’s nearby, how areas relate to each other. A map keeps that context visible the entire time.
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