Urban planning has traditionally relied on static drawings, surveys, and top-down decision making. For Khalid Bin Sultan City, Zaha Hadid Architects wanted to move beyond paper and presentations. They needed a way to let stakeholders experience the city as if it already existed, while gathering behavioural data that reflects how people truly move, meet, and interact in public spaces.

MSquared built a live digital twin of the planned city, available 24/7 for anyone to enter. Stakeholders could walk the streets, test building layouts, and witness first-hand how design choices shaped flow and gathering. This approach turned planning into a participatory process, where citizens, investors, and officials could co-create and review in the same shared environment.

The project introduced MSquared avatars, allowing participants to embody themselves and interact naturally in the virtual city. High-fidelity visuals were streamed directly to any browser using pixel streaming, removing downloads and setup barriers. This meant a diverse global audience could join instantly, ensuring broad engagement and authentic feedback.

The platform ran continuously for forty-five days, generating rich behavioural datasets. Architects saw where people paused, which routes felt natural, and how groups formed around open spaces. These insights supported faster alignment, clearer justification for design choices, and confidence that decisions were grounded in lived behavior rather than assumption. It demonstrated how persistent virtual worlds can drive better real-world outcomes.