Urbanization.org is an open platform that promotes a rational analysis of the urbanization issue at a global scale, so that the challenges cities are facing in the coming years are addressed in a more efficient and understandable way, for the benefit of the common good led by Vicente Guallart, IAAC founder and former chief architect of Barcelona city (2011-2015). This is a platform open to the participation of individuals and institutions across the globe with the mission of creating a worldwide network of urban stakeholders who share the vision of making cities more livable, efficient and responsive to future challenges.

The first project coming from this initiative has been the translation into English of the first scientific theory on the construction of cities, the General Theory of Urbanization, written in 1867 by Catalan urban planner Ildefons Cerdà after being approved its reform and expansion plan for Barcelona, and the development of a web with open data about it. The next projects framed under this initiative will be aimed at developing a comparative system to analyse the physical, social and informational structure of cities in an open and collaborative way, in order to improve the social, economic and environmental impact of future urban regeneration projects or new settlements in cities around the world.

The platform was presented during the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona, together with Urban Data Analysis studio 300,000 km/s, and with the collaboration of Contemporary Culture Centre of Barcelona (CCCB), Diputació de Barcelona, Incasòl, Actar Publishers and Boomblerg Philanthropies who have been involved in making the General Theory of Urbanization book’s English translation launch possible. As a first project, urbanization.org has published online a series of Barcelona data sets compiled in Ildefons Cerdà’s work comparing urban data from 1867 and 2017 with the mission to develop the science of making cities at a global scale.