How do you know if a city is truly livable? The Institute for Visionary Cities had an ambitious goal. They wanted to create Romania's most detailed urban performance index. Their project would measure 51 key performance indicators across domains like attractiveness, economy and business, tourism, demographics, education, health, local public finances, green spaces, and entertainment - covering all 41 county capital cities.
This wasn't your typical "best cities" list - it was Romania's first data-driven approach to understanding urban livability. With user experiences spread across multiple platforms, they turned to Apify to bring it all together.
When official data isn't enough
The Institute's framework had to capture the full picture of urban life - official metrics and actual resident experiences. Government statistics covered demographics, unemployment rates, and economic indicators. But what about restaurant quality? Tourist satisfaction? Cultural vibrancy that makes cities special?
This information lives in user reviews scattered across Google Places, TripAdvisor, and Booking.com. The Institute needed to create composite indicators combining venue counts, review volumes, and average ratings for different types of attractions across all 41 cities. Collecting this manually would have taken months and produced inconsistent results.
Our main goal was mainly marketing visibility, and while cities are interested in the results, they don't currently allocate budgets to purchase it. That’s why we used Apify to keep the costs as low as possible.
-- Florian Filat, The Institute for Visionary Cities
Apify Actors as the scraping solution
Rather than building scrapers from scratch or hiring expensive consultants, the Institute used Apify's ready-made scrapers, called Actors, to solve its data collection problem. This approach let them focus on urban analysis instead of building out technical infrastructure.
Their scraping workflow used several Actors from Apify Store:
- Google Maps Scraper for business listings and reviews
- TripAdvisor Scraper for tourism sentiment and attraction feedback
- Fast Booking Scraper for accommodation data
They filtered everything by city and built composite indicators that enabled sophisticated comparisons. This let them measure cultural vibrancy in Cluj-Napoca against Bucharest or compare tourist satisfaction between mountain towns and coastal cities.
Unexpected findings
The rankings upended expectations. Romania's industrial giants found themselves outranked by smaller cities that had quietly built thriving cultural scenes and prioritized livability. The data showed what residents had long known but couldn't prove: economic size doesn't equal quality of life.
The data revealed patterns that pure economic indicators missed - like why certain cities attract and retain young professionals while others struggle with population decline. The 2024 City Index received strong visibility in local media across Romania, being recognized as a pioneering initiative that brought valuable, objective insights at the city level.
Dynamic urban data for the future
With EU digitalization funding secured, the Institute plans to expand beyond annual reports. Their next phase will transform the City Index into a dynamic platform with real-time data updates and interactive visualizations, using Apify's automated scraping to keep pace with Romania's rapidly evolving urban landscape.
Romania now has its first real look at urban performance beyond the official numbers. Turns out, the best insights about city life come from the people actually experiencing it.
Learn the same data collection methods the Institute for Visionary Cities used - watch our TripAdvisor tutorial below or explore 6000+ ready-made Actors on Apify Store.
