Residents at the center of public space planning
Bavaria’s capital, and Germany’s third most populous city with 1.6 million urban residents (6.4 million in it’s metropolitan area), Munich is revered as a great city for people — even topping the Monocle Livable Cities ranking in 2018. With predicted demographic changes, the city looked at the role of public space in ensuring an accessible, relevant, and inviting city for the future. Following an extensive data collection process by the city, Gehl was called to analyze findings, uncovering the user patterns of public space across Munich.
The analysis mixed qualitative and quantitative findings with spatial context data to devise the everyday behavioral patterns of people. Amongst the conclusions was a recognition of the importance of the urban public spaces (the streets, squares, and corners rather than only the big green spaces), that people primarily use the public spaces in their resident neighborhood, and that the basic, everyday facilities, such as public toilets, clean urban furniture, and places to sit remain crucial to people’s use and perception of the public realm.
This report provides a shared language and stories of Munich’s public space use that can be used in the context of further urban development planning and preparations for the expected demographic changes.
