UrbanVerse: Learning Urban Region Representation Across Cities and Tasks
Organizations: School of Computing and Information System, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia · School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Abstract
Recent advances in urban region representation learning have enabled a wide range of applications in urban analytics, yet existing methods remain limited in their capabilities to generalize across cities and analytic tasks. We aim to generalize urban representation learning beyond city- and task-specific settings, towards a foundation-style model for urban analytics. To this end, we propose UrbanVerse, a model for cross-city urban representation learning and cross-task urban analytics. For cross-city generalization, UrbanVerse focuses on features local to the target regions and structural features of the nearby regions rather than the entire city. We model regions as nodes on a graph, which enables a random walk-based procedure to form "sequences of regions" that reflect both local and neighborhood structural features for urban region representation learning. For cross-task generalization, we propose a cross-task learning module named HCondDiffCT. This module integrates region-conditioned prior knowledge and task-conditioned semantics into the diffusion process to jointly model multiple downstream urban prediction tasks. HCondDiffCT is generic. It can also be integrated with existing urban representation learning models to enhance their downstream task effectiveness. Experiments on real-world datasets show that UrbanVerse consistently outperforms state-of-the-art methods across six tasks under cross-city settings, achieving up to 35.89% improvements in prediction accuracy.
Figures & tables
| CHI & SF (X) NYC (Y) | HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | GURPP ( Jin et al., 2025 ) | FlexiReg ( Sun et al., 2025 ) | UrbanVerse | Improvement |
| Crime | 0.301 0.037 | 0.211 0.028 | 0.241 0.005 | 0.297 0.017 | 0.339 0.047 | 0.545 0.039 | 0.663 0.024 | 0.724 0.008 | +9.20% |
| Check-in | 0.478 0.041 | 0.434 0.014 | 0.426 0.031 | 0.445 0.022 | 0.329 0.058 | 0.716 0.021 | 0.754 0.009 | 0.781 0.012 | +3.58% |
| Service Call | 0.173 0.031 | 0.071 0.016 | 0.155 0.012 | 0.124 0.011 | 0.231 0.039 | 0.247 0.055 | 0.513 0.031 | 0.589 0.021 | +14.81% |
| Population | 0.262 0.044 | 0.185 0.010 | 0.224 0.011 | 0.219 0.009 | 0.206 0.022 | 0.477 0.024 | 0.569 0.018 | 0.626 0.016 | +10.02% |
| Carbon | 0.136 0.026 | 0.025 0.016 | 0.051 0.033 | 0.085 0.036 | 0.139 0.057 | 0.009 0.024 | 0.324 0.022 | 0.389 0.027 | +20.06% |
| CHI & SF (X) Staten Island (Y) | Check-in | Population | Carbon | Nightlight |
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 0.148 0.031 | 0.181 0.024 | 0.136 0.038 | 0.226 0.033 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 0.098 0.027 | 0.056 0.018 | 0.106 0.038 | 0.394 0.023 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 0.061 0.019 | 0.092 0.014 | 0.514 0.018 | 0.577 0.019 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 0.023 0.067 | 0.073 0.017 | 0.013 0.023 | 0.063 0.026 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 0.057 0.022 | 0.027 0.015 | 0.051 0.038 | 0.077 0.027 |
| NYC | HREP | HREP-DiffCT | UrbanCLIP | UrbanCLIP-DiffCT | HAFusion | HAFusion-DiffCT | GURPP | GURPP-DiffCT |
| Crime | 0.681 0.014 | 0.784 0.013 ( +15.1% ) | 0.267 0.012 | 0.471 0.039 ( +76.4% ) | 0.734 0.015 | 0.823 0.011 ( +12.1% ) | 0.589 0.039 | 0.722 0.029 ( +22.6% ) |
| Check-in | 0.700 0.022 | 0.850 0.016 ( +21.4% ) | 0.458 0.005 | 0.642 0.025 ( +40.2% ) | 0.844 0.012 | 0.900 0.009 ( +6.6% ) | 0.757 0.019 | 0.837 0.017 ( +10.6% ) |
| Service Call | 0.398 0.019 | 0.589 0.014 ( +49.0% ) | 0.232 0.005 | 0.369 0.033 ( +59.1% ) | 0.493 0.014 | 0.667 0.006 ( +35.3% ) | 0.405 0.048 | 0.528 0.009 ( +30.4% ) |
| Population | 0.571 0.021 | 0.667 0.019 ( +16.8% ) | 0.276 0.002 | 0.392 0.024 ( +42.0% ) | 0.616 0.019 | 0.692 0.019 ( +12.3% ) | 0.381 0.026 | 0.420 0.021 ( +10.2% ) |
| Carbon | 0.184 0.050 | 0.373 0.036 ( +102.7% ) | 0.113 0.013 | 0.238 0.033 ( +110.6% ) | 0.189 0.019 | 0.358 0.017 ( +89.4% ) | 0.021 0.001 | 0.204 0.019 ( +871.4% ) |
Appendix figures & tables16 assets
Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.
Appendix
| Symbol | Description |
| A spatial area of interest | |
| A set of regions (non-overlapping space partitions) | |
| The number of regions | |
| A set of spatial grid cells (basic space partition units) | |
| The number of grid cells | |
| POI feature of cell |
| NYC ( New York Dataset, 2020 ) | CHI ( Chicago Dataset, 2020 ) | SF ( San Francisco Dataset, 2020 ) | |
| #regions | 180 | 77 | 175 |
| #grid cells | 438 | 720 | 1032 |
| #POIs | 24,496 | 57,891 | 28,578 |
| #POI categories | 15 | 15 | 15 |
| #crime records | 35,335 | 18,200 | 48,489 |
| (data collection time) | unknown | 12/2022 - 12/2022 | 01/2022 - 12/2022 |
| CHI & SF (X) NYC (Y) | Crime | Check-in | Service Call | ||||||
| MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | ||||
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 91.2 3.1 | 123.6 3.4 | 0.301 0.037 | 382.2 12.5 | 591.3 16.5 | 0.478 0.031 | 1638 43 | 2493 52 | 0.173 0.029 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 100.7 1.6 | 131.3 2.4 | 0.211 0.028 | 398.1 5.5 | 615.3 9.2 | 0.434 0.017 | 1842 15 | 2643 20 | 0.071 0.014 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 98.5 1.2 | 128.9 2.3 | 0.241 0.005 | 394.1 4.8 | 619.9 6.3 | 0.426 0.008 | 1693 21 | 2520 32 | 0.155 0.015 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 93.5 1.4 | 124.1 2.3 | 0.297 0.017 | 388.1 17.7 | 608.7 29.8 | 0.445 0.024 | 1778 9 | 2567 16 | 0.124 0.011 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 88.6 3.6 | 120.1 5.9 | 0.339 0.047 | 420.7 33.1 | 674.8 62.3 | 0.329 0.041 | 1587 43 | 2404 61 | 0.231 0.039 |
| CHI & SF (X) NYC (Y) | Population | Carbon | Nightlight | ||||||
| MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | ||||
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 3595 91 | 4542 97 | 0.262 0.034 | 668 17 | 1223 21 | 0.136 0.026 | 56.6 0.8 | 76.6 1.1 | 0.028 0.027 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 3801 46 | 4774 57 | 0.185 0.012 | 826 9 | 1298 11 | 0.025 0.016 | 56.5 0.9 | 77.2 1.1 | 0.011 0.029 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 3596 69 | 4657 81 | 0.224 0.014 | 783 4 | 1282 12 | 0.051 0.007 | 50.8 0.6 | 63.8 1.6 | 0.324 0.022 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 3601 19 | 4672 27 | 0.219 0.008 | 761 7 | 1258 11 | 0.085 0.013 | 56.9 0.4 | 76.7 0.6 | 0.026 0.014 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 3583 149 | 4711 169 | 0.206 0.041 | 645 33 | 1219 69 | 0.139 0.046 | 55.3 0.9 | 72.2 1.1 | 0.137 0.023 |
| NYC | Crime | Check-in | Service Call | ||||||
| MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | ||||
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 62.8 2.1 | 83.1 2.3 | 0.681 0.014 | 276.3 11.7 | 448.2 16.9 | 0.700 0.022 | 1430 29 | 2127 33 | 0.398 0.019 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 98.7 0.7 | 127.9 1.1 | 0.251 0.025 | 371.2 10.3 | 595.5 5.9 | 0.471 0.023 | 1783 22 | 2597 18 | 0.103 0.026 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 97.4 2.6 | 126.1 1.9 | 0.267 0.012 | 393.6 5.9 | 602.4 3.1 | 0.458 0.005 | 1409 7 | 2401 15 | 0.232 0.005 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 95.5 1.4 | 122.4 1.8 | 0.315 0.010 | 380.2 3.8 | 594.9 6.4 | 0.471 0.011 | 1780 27 | 2577 19 | 0.117 0.013 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 79.5 1.5 | 116.9 2.1 | 0.374 0.019 | 388.1 11.9 | 621.5 34.1 | 0.422 0.032 | 1484 29 | 2325 37 | 0.281 0.023 |
| NYC | Population | Carbon | Nightlight | ||||||
| MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | ||||
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 2656 59 | 3461 83 | 0.571 0.021 | 719 35 | 1188 37 | 0.184 0.025 | 58.7 1.1 | 78.7 1.3 | 0.026 0.024 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 3753 47 | 4734 59 | 0.198 0.019 | 817 31 | 1272 42 | 0.064 0.037 | 55.8 0.5 | 75.4 1.0 | 0.057 0.015 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 3338 11 | 4499 16 | 0.276 0.002 | 730 13 | 1238 19 | 0.113 0.013 | 48.9 0.3 | 63.2 1.0 | 0.337 0.019 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 3515 18 | 4545 26 | 0.261 0.002 | 751 12 | 1253 21 | 0.092 0.014 | 56.2 0.4 | 75.8 0.8 | 0.047 0.016 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 3578 52 | 4685 42 | 0.215 0.011 | 618 10 | 1236 16 | 0.117 0.009 | 51.7 1.0 | 70.5 1.6 | 0.176 0.038 |
| Staten Island | Check-in | Population | Carbon | Nightlight |
| HREP ( Zhou et al., 2023 ) | 0.136 0.038 | 0.192 0.028 | 0.126 0.015 | 0.239 0.021 |
| RegionDCL ( Li et al., 2023 ) | 0.061 0.056 | 0.028 0.021 | 0.237 0.029 | 0.399 0.021 |
| UrbanCLIP ( Yan et al., 2024 ) | 0.072 0.014 | 0.088 0.013 | 0.557 0.016 | 0.605 0.015 |
| CityFM ( Balsebre et al., 2024 ) | 0.067 0.047 | 0.098 0.015 | 0.079 0.015 | 0.079 0.031 |
| GeoHG ( Zou et al., 2025 ) | 0.094 0.035 | 0.023 0.012 | 0.047 0.028 | 0.103 0.049 |
| Embedding Learning | Downstream Task | |||||
| NYC | CHI | SF | NYC | CHI | SF | |
| HREP | 97 | 102 | 98 | 92 (0.003) | 146 (0.005) | 91 (0.004) |
| RegionDCL | 2,099 | 475 | 1,925 | 0.017 (0.001) | 0.054 (0.002) | 0.023 (0.001) |
| UrbanCLIP | 5,817 | 4,911 | 4,001 | 86 (0.005) | 86 (0.005) | 84 (0.005) |
| CityFM | 15,301 | 14,571 | 15,427 | 104 (0.006) | 102 (0.005) | 104 (0.006) |
| GeoHG | 90 | 107 | 105 | 96 (0.004) | 95 (0.004) | 98 (0.004) |
| Number of Cells | 256 | 512 | 1,024 | 2,048 | 4,096 | 8,192 | 16,384 |
| Training time | 27 | 50 | 97 | 191 | 376 | 752 | 1,495 |
| Singapore ( Singapore Dataset, 2019 ) | Lisbon ( Lisbon Region Boundary, 2024 ) | |
| #regions | 324 | 53 |
| #spatial partition units | 748 | 690 |
| #POIs | 65,082 | 43,961 |
| #POI categories | 15 | 15 |
| #check-ins | 355,463 | 24,327 |
| (data collection time) | 04/2012 - 09/2013 | 04/2012 - 09/2013 |
| NYC & CHI & SF (X) Singapore (Y) | NYC & CHI & SF (X) Lisbon (Y) | |||
| Check-in | Population | Check-in | Population | |
| FlexiReg | 0.223 0.015 | 0.518 0.018 | 0.716 0.014 | 0.881 0.005 |
| UrbanVerse | 0.368 0.016 | 0.625 0.006 | 0.781 0.011 | 0.909 0.010 |
| Improvement | +65.0% | +20.7% | +9.1% | +3.2% |
| 2 | 4 | 8 | 16 | |
| Crime | 0.721 0.021 | 0.724 0.008 | 0.726 0.007 | 0.711 0.011 |
| Check-in | 0.776 0.029 | 0.781 0.011 | 0.779 0.012 | 0.772 0.009 |
| Service Call | 0.585 0.023 | 0.589 0.009 | 0.584 0.011 | 0.569 0.012 |
| Population | 0.624 0.026 | 0.626 0.006 | 0.621 0.013 | 0.613 0.005 |
| Carbon | 0.383 0.029 | 0.389 0.006 | 0.390 0.011 | 0.363 0.019 |
| Nightlight | 0.498 0.031 | 0.492 0.013 | 0.488 0.011 | 0.475 0.009 |
| 1 | 10 | 50 | 100 | |
| Crime | 0.645 0.028 | 0.724 0.008 | 0.715 0.008 | 0.710 0.006 |
| Check-in | 0.754 0.022 | 0.781 0.013 | 0.776 0.013 | 0.779 0.009 |
| Service Call | 0.538 0.039 | 0.589 0.009 | 0.590 0.011 | 0.583 0.009 |
| Population | 0.537 0.034 | 0.626 0.006 | 0.621 0.009 | 0.626 0.005 |
| Carbon | 0.401 0.051 | 0.389 0.006 | 0.381 0.005 | 0.385 0.005 |
| Nightlight | 0.430 0.041 | 0.492 0.013 | 0.502 0.010 | 0.485 0.008 |
| Crime Prediction | Check-in Prediction | Service Call Prediction | |||||||
| MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | MAE | RMSE | ||||
| HREP | 62.8 2.1 | 83.1 2.3 | 0.681 0.014 | 276.3 11.7 | 448.2 16.9 | 0.700 0.022 | 1430 29 | 2128 34 | 0.398 0.019 |
| HREP-DiffCT | 50.8 1.6 | 68.8 2.1 | 0.784 0.013 | 205.9 7.8 | 316.5 17.1 | 0.850 0.016 | 1188 31 | 1756 33 | 0.589 0.014 |
| Improvement | +19.1% | +17.2% | +15.1% | +25.5% | +29.4% | +21.4% | +16.9% | +17.5% | +48.0% |
| UrbanCLIP | 97.4 2.6 | 126.1 1.9 | 0.267 0.012 | 393.6 5.9 | 602.4 3.1 | 0.458 0.005 | 1409 7 | 2401 16 | 0.232 0.005 |
| UrbanCLIP-DiffCT | 77.6 3.2 | 107.4 4.2 | 0.471 0.039 | 348.1 13.5 | 489.2 17.7 | 0.642 0.025 | 1338 52 | 2179 64 | 0.369 0.033 |
Geospatial Representation Learning
Geospatial representation learning builds reusable embeddings of places, imagery, maps, mobility, and Earth data for spatial prediction and reasoning.
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