Tinyworlds: Whole Cities, Pocket-Sized

Tinyworlds is an interactive collection of isometric pixel-art miniatures that turns real places into pocket-sized cities. Each scene is generated by code from open map data and can be explored online for free. The real-world collection ranges from New York, represented across all five boroughs with buildings at their actual heights, to Ribeirão Preto, extending from its downtown grid toward surrounding cane fields. Other examples include central Orlando and its lakes, El Calafate on Lago Argentino, Valencia’s old town and City of Arts and Sciences, and Las Vegas’s Strip, downtown, and desert valley. The project presents city maps as playful, detailed visualizations while preserving recognizable geography and landmarks.

A separate set of imagined places brings the same treatment to fantasy settings: Winterfell, King’s Landing, and the broader world of Westeros, from the Wall to Asshai. The project also invites visitors to help choose future cities through a funding ranking. Building a city takes about US$100 in labor and server costs; cities with the most funding are built first, and contributions beyond that amount support hosting and continued development. Both the map-generation pipeline and the viewer are open source, and the underlying data comes from OpenStreetMap, the Overture Maps Foundation, and other open sources. Visitors can explore existing maps, contribute toward new ones, inspect the code, or suggest a place to add.