Release notes for Urban March 2026

The following updates have been made to ArcGIS Urban.

General

The following new features and general improvements are available in Urban:

• The Google Photorealistic 3D basemap (beta) is the new default realistic visualization in Urban, providing a more realistic visual context for plans, projects, and the overview. See Manage realistic visualization layers for details.
• The existing buildings in the default schematic visualization now show the Open 3D Buildings layer based on OpenStreetMap and Overture data.
• The analysis mode comes with the following enhancements:
  • Thumbnails can now be displayed in the Analysis list for easier visual identification. When opening an analysis, you can capture a thumbnail based on what is visible in the scene.
  • Analyses can be sorted manually in the UI for improved organization.
• Urban supports French Canadian (fr ‑ CA) as a new locale.

Overview

The following new features and improvements were added to the overview in Urban:

• An updated navigation with a new header brings a cleaner and more intuitive experience to the overview.
  • Access the data manager through the new Configure Urban model option in the drop-down menu under the city name or logo on the upper left.
  • Switch the visualization in the new Layers tab in the upper right.
  • Change the time of day and shadows using the Daylight tab in the upper right.
  • Use the screenshot tool by expanding the Navigate in 3D button in the lower right.

Project editing

The following new improvement was added to the project editing experience:

• Saving a project as a duplicate now includes its 3D models.

Plan editing

The following new features and improvements were added to the plan editing experience:

• Densification workflows are being introduced with a first set of new features with more support coming in future releases:
  • In the existing scenario, there is now a focused editing experience to create building spaces representing existing buildings. While editing, the space-use legend shows areas per space use, and the building information displays height, floor-area ratio, and more.
  • You can now set a development status on building spaces to indicate whether a space is Unchanged, Repurposed, or New.
  • Unchanged spaces are visualized in white in all scenarios by default. While editing, they are colored by their space use.
  • Unchanged spaces are used to calculate metrics.
  • Building spaces of all types are exported in both the spreadsheet and the scenario web scene for downstream reporting and presentations.

• Zoning and overlay parameters are now available to calculate metrics:
  • Numeric parameters on zoning and overlay boundaries—such as modal splits for traffic analysis zones—can now be used to calculate parcel-based metrics.
  • The parameter values can be manually added to zoning types and overlay boundaries.

Data manager

The following new features and improvements were added to the data manager:

• You can now switch between Default and Custom for the schematic and realistic visualization.
  • The default visualization includes layers from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World for the schematic visualization and the Google Photorealistic 3D basemap (when enabled on the organization) for the realistic visualization.
• When importing from a feature layer/table or spreadsheet, you can use the Skip features with errors option while importing the remaining valid ones.

Known limitations

The following functionality are known limitations of this release:

• The city web scene and project scenario web scene do not support copying of 3D models.
• Plan and project scenario web scenes do not include image files you uploaded to the scenario. This will be added in a future release.
• Masking buildings visually modifies the terrain when using the Google Photorealistic 3D basemap, especially in hilly terrain.
• The Google Photorealistic 3D basemap is not exported to the city web scene, the project scenario web scene, and the plan scenario web scene.
• Masking buildings in existing scenarios is not supported.
• There is no undo/redo for adding or updating a thumbnail in the analysis mode.
• Analysis thumbnails currently aren't copied when duplicating a plan or project.

Deprecated and removed functionality

Old metrics in plans are deprecated and will be removed with the next release. For plans, convert old to new metrics. See Convert old to new metrics for details. For projects, you can continue using old metrics beyond the next release.

Enhancements and bug fixes

The following enhancements and bug fixes are introduced with this release:

• Improved handling of layers without a spatial reference when exporting plan scenario web scenes.
• A disabled tooltip has been added for the metric pin in locked scenarios.
• Neighboring project intersection buffers are now handled more reliably.
• Bug fix—The suitability parcel selection now transfers correctly to the development mode.
• Bug fix—The urban model owner now displays correctly in the sharing settings.
• Bug fix—The question mark icon now displays correctly in Hebrew locale.