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Urban

The Urban tab is a fixed report of basic project metrics

Written by Holly Conrad Smith

Get powerful insights about your project’s performance, at a glance.

The Urban Tab shows a quick analysis of the geometry you've created on drawing layers in your project, The Urban Tab gives a report of standard real estate metrics, like GBA, FAR/FSR, and Unit Counts. It calculates using inputs from Usages and Properties, multiplied by geometric properties like length and area.

The values in the Urban Tab update dynamically as you draw.

Urban is a fixed report and can't be edited. To report on anything Urban doesn't show, create a custom calculation in Analytics.

Access the Urban Tab

The icon looks like a house and a skyscraper.

The urban tab is always included at project startup. Click the icon to review it.

In Giraffe v6+, add the app to a panel.

User Interface Overview

1. Switch whether building areas are grouped by Usage, Building, or Group

2. Select which areas to view - Gross Building, Gross Floor, or Net Rentable/Saleable

3. Display of areas, grouped as selected in step 1

4. Breakdown of Site coverage, and FAR/FSR

5. Urban metrics like height, facade area, and basement area.

6. Parking metrics

7. Breakdown of residential units, if applicable

8. Breakdown of density metrics, if applicable

What features are used for calculations:

  • Urban only counts Giraffe geometries created on drawing layers.

  • Urban only counts what is visible. If Features are on an invisible drawing layer or Invisible Scenario, they will not be counted in Urban.

  • If the feature was created by or assigned to a 3rd party app, it will be ignored.

    • IE - GLTF imports or dxf imports will be ignored until converted into Giraffe geometry with a usage applied.

  • Urban is intended to report on Building massing. Land Use and generic usages are generally excluded.

    • To report on other usages, create a custom report in Analytics.

Building Area Bar-chart

The areas of all the buildings (whose layers are visible) in the project are aggregated in a bar-chart. By default, values are grouped by usage.

Click on GBA, GFA or NSA to see these values in the chart. Change what groups are shown in the chart using the dropdown on the top right.

Urban only counts building usages in the area schedule.

Why a usage shows 0 sf in GFA or NSA

Count core and circulation in your gross area totals without inflating your rentable area. The Urban Tab counts every building geometry in GBA. GFA multiplies that area by the usage's Efficiency, and NSA multiplies it by the usage's Sell Efficiency.

For instance, the Core usage has Efficiency and Sell Efficiency set to 0 by default. A Core geometry shows 0 sf in GFA and NSA even when its Levels and Floor to Floor are set. However, its Gross Building Area is still calculated in GBA.

If a building usage shows 0 in GFA or NSA, click GBA above the building area bar chart to see it counted.

To count a usage toward GFA, open the usage editor and set that usage's Efficiency above 0. To count it toward NSA, set its Sell Efficiency above 0. An Efficiency of 1 counts the full area.

Site Area Breakdown

The FSR/FAR is calculated by dividing the total building area by the site area.

The FSR/FAR updates based on your selection of GBA, GFA, or NSA areas in the section above.

The site area (the area within the project boundary) is broken down into:

Building Footprint

This includes any area underneath stacked building sections, including overhangs.

This includes buildings from outside the project/site boundary!

Site Hardscape

This includes any part of the site covered by road/footpath, on-grade parking, plaza or other pavement features.

Paved areas:

Roads and paths areas:

Open Space

This includes any landscape or space within the project boundary that has not been covered by any features.

Clipping

Giraffe attempts to recognize when features overlap. When you draw a building on top of a landscape (for instance), the Giraffe calculation engine attempts to remove the landscape area under the building footprint from the landscape coverage calculations.

Clipping Processes:

  • Landscape

    • Landscape overlapped by roads, paving, or buildings do not count toward open space or landscape

  • Paving

    • Paving and roads overlapped by buildings do not count toward hardscape

  • Parking

    • If an on-grade parking lot is covered by landscape, plaza, road or buildings, it will reduce it's number of parking bays provided in proportion to how much it is covered.

  • Overlapping geometries of the same type

    • If two or more landscape geometries overlap, the duplicated space is only counted once

    • If two paving geometries overlap, the duplicated space is only counted once

  • Outside the site area

    • The calculations do not clip to the site boundary. Be sure to include all geometries within the site boundary for correct calculations.

💡 Typically, Giraffe is smart enough to calculate when features overlap. However, projects with a lot of geometry can overload processing, so you may see this message:

If you see this message, you may want to create your own coverage percentages and FAR/FSR reports using Analytics.

Urban Metrics

The urban metrics are rolled-up calculations for all building geometries in the report.

  • The maximum height is the tallest building in the project.

  • The facade area is the sum of each section's facade area.

  • The Floor:Facade ratio is the ratio of the total gross area (GBA) to the total facade area.

  • The basement area is the total gross area (GBA) of all basement features.

  • Paved area is the total paved area - roads, footpaths, on-grade parking and plaza. Hovering the mouse pointer over this number reveals the breakdown of paved area between these types.

  • Landscape is the total landscape area that has not been covered by hardscape

Parking Metrics

Provides a quick comparison of Parking Provided / Parking Required for the whole project. Green means there is adequate parking. Red means more parking is needed.

Hovering the mouse pointer over this reveals a breakdown by parking type and usage.

How Parking is Calculated

  • Parking Provided is the gross area (GBA) of all parking features multiplied by parkingProvided per 100m²/1000f²

  • If a parking feature has generated parking bays, these will be counted, multiplied by the number of levels and used as the feature's parking provided value.

  • Parking is calculated for each feature, and them summed across the project

How Parking Required is Calculated

  • Parking Required is the net area (GFA) of all building features multiplied by parkingRequired per 100m²/1000f².

  • Residential buildings calculate the number of parking bays required per dwelling, which is configured in the usage editor (plus a total for visitor parking) instead of calculating by area.

  • The visitorParkingBays adds additional required parking per feature

Residential Metrics

Displays a report of dwellings based on calculated areas or dwelling counts.

How dwellings are calculated

Urban counts dwellings in one of two ways, depending on how the geometry is set up.

  • A building geometry with a residential usage splits its saleable area (NSA) into dwellings. Giraffe uses the Size and Mix of each dwelling type in the usage's Dwellings group. Saleable area is the gross building area multiplied by the usage's Sell Efficiency.

  • A geometry with a Dwelling Count uses that count directly. When Dwelling Count Per Level is on, Giraffe multiplies the count by the geometry's levels.

Why a building shows 0 dwellings in Urban

A residential building shows 0 dwellings in Urban when it has no saleable area or no unit mix to split that area into. Check these settings:

  • Sell Efficiency is above 0. A Sell Efficiency of 0 gives the building 0 saleable area, so it produces 0 dwellings. Click NSA above the building area bar chart to see whether the building has saleable area. To fix it, open the Usage Editor and set the usage's Sell Efficiency above 0.

  • The usage's Dwellings group has at least one dwelling type with a Size and a Mix above 0.

  • The building's drawing layer is visible. Urban skips geometries on hidden drawing layers. Analytics still counts them.

Dwellings showing 0 in Analytics? Check the settings in Calculating Dwelling Counts.

Density Metrics

Gives a few density metrics based on occupancy.

  • The number of residents is calculated by summing each dwelling by the number of residents per dwelling. This is also specified in the dwellings property of the Usage editor.

  • The Space/person is the total landscape area of the project divided by the total number of residents.

  • The Carparks/person is the total number of parking bays provided divided by the total number of residents.

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