Geovation Scotland are pleased to welcome diagonalWorks as our new Enterprise-In-Residence. We spoke to the team to find out more about who they are and what they do.

diagonalWorks are looking forward to joining Geovation Scotland as an Enterprise-in-Residence. Gala Camacho, a data scientist and director of diagonalWorks will be based at their Meadowbank office until March 2025. She is looking forward to being around the office, expanding her network and meeting other entrepreneurs to create communities of practise to learn and support each other.

Meet diagonalWorks  

diagonalWorks is a consultancy specialising in data science, strategic planning, impact analysis and feminist urbanism. We are woman-led, remote first and steward-owned. Our work focuses on inclusive place design and impact analysis that is data-driven.  

Places all around us have been planned in ways that only serve a small section of the population. Inequity in place design affects people’s experience of their surroundings, individually and collectively, and their ability to navigate, enjoy and participate in society. It also affects the extent to which they trust and feel represented within planning and development processes. 

Our aim is to drive positive change and support places to become better for everyone, places which empower people to thrive. 

We support and help our clients achieve transparent, repeatable and scalable place-based analysis that builds trust in the planning process and ensures informed decisions that truly reflect wider public interests. We harness the power of our own open-source tooling and focus on enhancing planning strategies and impact assessments, from masterplan to regional scales.  

How diagonalWorks helps clients provide data-driven solutions  

We are interested in helping clients and collaborators solve problems like: 

• How digital innovation can help solve the challenges posed by empty housing?  
• What does the concept of a feminist city mean for policymakers and what could it look like? 
• Can the 15-minute cities concept work?  
• How can we use location data to make planning pathways accessible? 
• How can recognised standards enhance active travel?
• How can we foster collaboration and positive change within the built environment by harnessing innovation in planning and technology?  

For the past four years we have focused our efforts on product development, building, amongst other things, our open-source geospatial computation engine b6.  

We are now in a position to focus on using our tools and excited to undertake urban analytics projects, no matter how small or how large.  

Early on in our journey as a business we participated in CivTech Scotland’s Accelerator, with sponsors Scottish Borders Council and South of Scotland Enterprise. We created a 20-minute-neighbourhood-inspired analysis to support the development of planning policies including Local Place Plans and Local Development Plans, as well as more broadly assisting with directing investment in an effective and transparent way. 

You can watch Gala at The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference talking about an analysis derivative from the CivTech work – Routing algorithms, 20-minute neighbourhoods and hills in Scottish towns. She explores different ways using geospatial data which can change the way we see the world and creating more equitable and sustainable spaces by including gradient data when considering pathways. 

Meet Gala  

Gala is based in Edinburgh and is an active member of the Scottish geospatial and entrepreneurship ecosystem. She is inspired everyday by the feminist urbanism work happening locally, led by Glasgow City Council’s commitment to becoming a feminist city. 

At diagonalWorks, Gala leads our technical work, and undertakes executive functions, which she shares with fellow director Veronica, who leads on Planning. Her technical career has focused mostly on working with non-technical people to develop analytics for measurement, in many different contexts, to help inform decisions.  

Outside of work Gala gets involved with organisations that try to elevate the voices of those who are marginalised – mostly in, but not limited to, technology. She is always in search of interesting projects, particularly in the intersection of data & analytics, community building, and technical products that enhance equity in our society. More locally and specifically, she is the convenor of Geomob Edinburgh events, after starting up the chapter earlier this year.  

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