Came across this site – Trulia, which provides an easy set of tools for visualising a range of urban phenomena including for example commute distance across San Francisco .  There are a number of other datasets  which can also be visualised including  property type, crimes rates, schools rating and the location of amenities. The site has been set up to support buyers ans sellers in the resident real estate market. However, its potential for urban research in areas such as liveability, housing affordability and population health is significant. Particularly, if the underlying data can be programmatically accessed and spatial-statistical analysis permitted. This is the kind of data we are creating programmatic data feeds to across Australia and supporting data interrogation and visualisation through the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN).