A city should tell you what is alive right now.

Cities are alive in real time, but the interfaces were static: reviews, calendars, listings, stale recommendations.

I wanted a visual sense of what was happening now. Where is the energy? Where should I go? What should I do right now?

The product idea was less about events and more about live social proof. A city could become readable if you could see its current motion.

A more complete, adult version of the pattern later showed up in things like Snap Maps.

I explored Clustr as a product for discovering real-time activity in a city.

It was a visual product thesis before the market had fully trained people to expect live location and activity layers.

Sometimes the pattern is right before the distribution or social behavior is ready.

Being early is not a business model by itself. It is a signal.

Clustr is not active, but the read still matters.

I saw that the map could become a living interface, not just a navigation surface.