4 of the World's Great Cities Like You've Never Seen Them Before

Late last year, Nokia asked the San Francisco-based design and technology studio Stamen to help the company think about how to engage web developers in using its colossal cache of mapping data. It's a portfolio that includes, among other things, driving directions and LIDAR surveys revealing the 3D shape of buildings for cities all over the world.

"Rather than delivering some fancy power-point presentation to get folded up into somebody else’s power-point presentation at a corporate meeting," says Eric Rodenbeck, Stamen's CEO and creative director, "we thought, 'let’s build something and make it public.'"