Measuring What We Care About: Harnessing Digital Tools for Deeper Urban Insights

When Jan Gehl met developmental psychologist Ingrid, she posed a question that would change the trajectory of his career: why are architects not interested in people? This simple yet profound inquiry sparked Jan’s curiosity. At the time, more research existed on the ideal environment for Siberian tigers than on what makes a city livable for humans.

Determined to change this, Jan secured a grant to study human behavior in urban spaces. He and Ingrid traveled to Italy, where they spent hours, days, weeks, and months, observing how people interacted with cities. They watched their movements, noted their behaviors, and analyzed their relationship with public spaces. His philosophy was simple: we measure what we care about.

Understanding public life through data

Jan and Ingrid’s early clipboard counts of people and their behaviors formed the basis for Jan’s books, research, and the foundation of a new approach to understanding public life. Today, we call it the Gehl Lens.

In practice, the Gehl Lens uses data, thick and thin, to uncover how spaces truly perform for people. Built on decades of working with cities as a living laboratory, we’ve developed a robust methodology and a suite of digital tools for studying the interactions between public space and public life.

In theory, the Gehl Lens is more than data, it is the lens through which we see the world — at eye level. At a time when most architects and urban planners were designing cities at a birds eye view, Jan took a different approach by focusing on how people experience cities from the level of the human eye. Historically, cities have been designed so that when you walk at three miles per hour, you experience sensory stimulation every four to five seconds. Cities are meant to be experienced at eye level, engaging all our senses and while context, climate, and culture differ, human behavior remains universal.

Even though the urban planning and architecture fields boast of human-centered design, in reality most cities continue to develop in ways that impede our natural ways of moving, engaging, connecting, and sharing as inherently social, walking beings.

The Gehl Lens helps us counter this degradation by paying closer attention to our surroundings and looking deeper to uncover how a place is truly lived. By doing so, we can encounter meaningful stories, identify patterns, and develop recommendations that inform design decisions.

Virginia Lui, Project Manager & Senior Creative Strategist

In many ways, the ‘science’ behind studying public life is as much a mindset as it is a method. Anyone, anywhere, has the ability to observe their cities more intentionally, and Gehl’s methodologies have been refined and open-sourced to make this practice more accessible. Just as site analyses would account for infrastructural, historical, legal, and geographical factors, studying public life should also be a prerequisite for any urban project. Like the Siberian tiger, to design habitats for humans, you must first understand how they think, act, and interact with their environment. And by counting people and prioritizing their needs, we can create places that invite people to gather, spend time, and support a healthier, equitable, and more sustainable life.

An ever-evolving method

Today, Gehl continues to bridge the gap between social science and architecture. We approach our work both as social scientists, architects, and strategists, spending extensive time investigating the interconnected relationship between life and form in cities worldwide. As social scientists, we observe how people use their environments and how these spaces contribute to their quality of life. As architects, we focus on the form of the built environment in response to people’s needs and behaviors.

Our working method is simple and effective. At every possibility we start with a data-led, comprehensive look at the project context, on-site and surrounding areas, and their connection to planetary systems. First, we uncover how people interact with their urban environments by observing their movements, behaviors, and perceptions — in the morning and evening, weekdays and weekends. We then analyze the data, identify patterns, and highlight the strengths and pitfalls and their impact on quality of life.

We then combine qualitative observations with quantitative insights to craft compelling narratives, advising city leaders, policymakers, developers, and organizations on strategies that align with their goals while enhancing a vibrant public life. These strategies are ultimately translated into concrete designs for neighborhoods and cities. By aligning people’s needs with attractive, functional, and inviting environments, we help shape places so they can shape us. These welcoming and accessible places encourage movement, social connection, a sense of belonging, and provide people with agency.

Harnessing digital tools for deeper urban insights

Over the past 60 years, we have conducted surveys in more than 250 cities using a consistent framework and building on a rich body of knowledge that allows us to compare urban data across the world. As digitalization accelerates, we are embracing new opportunities to reveal deeper nuances — not only in how people move through and occupy public spaces, but also in how they experience them. With an expanding suite of digital tools — including the photo-voice app Eye Level City and several interactive engagement platforms such as Celebrate Public Life — we can now uncover relationships not just between people and places, but also between people themselves.

By harnessing the potential of AI, we are also opening up new ways to build empathy — helping us interpret stories, patterns, and perspectives at scale — so that our strategies and designs foster a deeper understanding of the human experience.

Liselott Stenfeldt, Director of Research & Development, Partner

It is this growing insight that will ensure our work remains relevant and has a meaningful, positive impact globally. In 2025, we are building a membership that will give city employees access to global learnings and help them gain deeper insights into how their own cities are performing — all to support the creation of better cities for people. Follow the development and sign up.

Eye Level City

The Eye Level City app is a photo-voice tool designed to collect data about people’s experiences of urban spaces. Developed as part of the Urban Belonging project, the app has been used in various initiatives, including the Doerr School project where it supported the conceptualization of the school’s social environment.

Celebrate Public Life  

Celebrate Public Life is an interactive platform designed to crowdsource the places people cherish most in their cities. Developed together with the Van Leer Foundation, it forms part of the Urban95 initiative.

Hume AI-related 

Building on Gehl’s principle of ‘measuring what we care about’, we are exploring the use of advanced affective AI tools, such as Hume AI, to deepen our understanding of how people emotionally relate to urban spaces. This was an efficient method when unfolding the feeling of awe in Charlotte.