A free map for travellers. It shows a city's liveliest centres (its hearts) and how many minutes they are on foot, over the real pedestrian network, from a point such as your hotel.

How is the heart of a city found?

The density of food, nightlife, shopping, sights, accommodation, pedestrian areas and rail stations is measured from open data; the densest, clearly separate areas become hearts. Every city uses the same method and parameters, with no hand-written content.

How are walking times calculated?

In advance, on the street and footpath network at 4.8 km/h, with allowances for stairs and slopes. The 20-minute limit is shown as the 'walk ring'.

Which cities are there, and how are new ones added?

Ready cities are listed on the home page. You can search for a city that isn't listed and request it; requests go into a queue.

Is it free, and where does the data come from?

It is free. The data comes from open sources such as OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps, GeoNames, GHSL, Wikidata and Copernicus; details are in the sources and licences sections on this page.

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About

downtown shows a city's liveliest centres (its hearts) and how many minutes it takes to walk there on the real pedestrian network. Everything is computed from open data with the same method and the same parameters in every city; there is no hand-written city content.

Frequently asked questions

What is downtown?: A free map for travellers. It shows a city's liveliest centres (its hearts) and how many minutes they are on foot, over the real pedestrian network, from a point such as your hotel.
How is the heart of a city found?: The density of food, nightlife, shopping, sights, accommodation, pedestrian areas and rail stations is measured from open data; the densest, clearly separate areas become hearts. Every city uses the same method and parameters, with no hand-written content.
How are walking times calculated?: In advance, on the street and footpath network at 4.8 km/h, with allowances for stairs and slopes. The 20-minute limit is shown as the 'walk ring'.
Which cities are there, and how are new ones added?: Ready cities are listed on the home page. You can search for a city that isn't listed and request it; requests go into a queue.
Is it free, and where does the data come from?: It is free. The data comes from open sources such as OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps, GeoNames, GHSL, Wikidata and Copernicus; details are in the sources and licences sections on this page.

Method

The city's real urban area comes from the GHSL urban centre polygon and is split into H3 hexagons about 150 m across.
Each cell gets a "pulse" score from the density of food, nightlife, shopping, landmarks, lodging, pedestrian space and rail stations; office and industrial areas are penalised.
The area whose pulse is high relative to the city's peak is the Center; distinct peaks inside the Center are Hearts. Hearts are ranked by size, labelled by character and named from the data.
Walking times are computed offline on the real pedestrian network at 4.8 km/h, accounting for stairs and slope. The area within 20 min of a heart is the Walkable ring.
City summaries are generated from the same computed facts with templates.

Data sources and attribution

© OpenStreetMap contributors — pedestrian network, rail stations, squares, basemap. License: ODbL 1.0.
© Overture Maps Foundation — places (CDLA-Permissive-2.0; Foursquare portion Apache-2.0), transportation, infrastructure and divisions (ODbL).
GeoNames — city list and multilingual names. License: CC BY 4.0.
GHSL GHS-UCDB R2024A — urban area boundaries. © European Union, 1995-2026. License: CC BY 4.0.
Wikidata — landmark importance and multilingual names. License: CC0.
Slope correction: produced using Copernicus WorldDEM-30 © DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.
Protomaps — basemap tiles (OpenStreetMap data, ODbL; style BSD).

License

City data (zones, hearts, walking times) is derived from OpenStreetMap and published under the Open Database License (ODbL 1.0); download it from the links below.

The hotel list is a separate dataset (Overture places): CDLA-Permissive-2.0 plus the Foursquare Apache-2.0 NOTICE.

ODbL 1.0 license text

Data versions

Pinned source versions: Overture 2026-09-23.1 · GeoNames 2026-10-05 · GHS_UCDB_GLOBE_R2024A_V1_2 · Protomaps 20261005

City catalog: 2026-10-05

Istanbul · build 20261005T1439-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Tokyo · build 20261005T1500-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
New York · build 20261005T1553-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Bangkok · build 20261005T1448-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Rome · build 20261005T1519-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Paris · build 20261005T1511-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Barcelona · build 20261005T1526-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Prague · build 20261005T1541-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Marrakesh · build 20261005T1559-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data
Lisbon · build 20261005T1534-d1e2f1a6 · ODbL data