At Gehl, our responsibility doesn’t stop at the planning phase — we are committed to creating urban solutions that leave a lasting, positive impact on both people’s everyday lives and the planet.

For decades, our work designing inclusive neighborhoods has helped countless communities regain control over their health and well-being, making it easier for people to live in harmony within planetary boundaries and take purposeful climate action. Our projects are strategic, but also incremental and close to the ground: our progress is measured in the lived experience of people. We don’t just succeed if we plan well — we succeed if life is improved for all. We strive to prove this change is possible and inspire solutions that can scale-up globally.

Designing a socially sustainable city

Cities affect people in diverse ways, offering opportunities to some while posing challenges to others. When it comes to urban strategy and design, creating spaces that are safe, inspire a sense of belonging, and provide people with agency begins with a deep understanding of the communities we are designing with and for.

This means taking extra steps to ask the right questions, forge stronger partnerships, and reach further with data to find representative stories of people’s true lived experiences. Read our full Diversity, Equity, Inclusion statement.

Cultivating a healthy neighborhood model

The ability to live a healthy life is the ongoing balance between stressors put on us and resources made available to us, our socioeconomic conditions, and the environments we experience every day. In fact, 80% of our well-being comes from our everyday surroundings.

A neighborhood-level approach to urban health recognizes that change starts within the community and that our health is multigenerational and historic. By considering the materiality and ecology of places and investing in the design of our streets, public spaces, civic amenities, and social infrastructure, we can ensure we meet our social and biological needs for good health.

Creating healthy neighborhoods requires collaboration across sectors and disciplines, with an emphasis on preventative health that centers on our everyday experience. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution — each approach should start by understanding the unique needs and dynamics of a place and the communities that occupy it, then applying this insight to inform the design, programming, and development of the built form.

Making the sustainable choice the easy choice

Cities have the potential to shape the way we live and encourage behaviors that scale climate action. In the next 15 years, we need to embrace a new urban behaviors — from adopting plant-based diets to choosing zero-emission transport like walking and cycling.

To unlock this potential, we need to create spaces where culture, infrastructure, and desire align to make new behaviors not just possible, but irresistibly easy and enjoyable. This requires designing environments that nudge us toward change. As William Gibson said, “The future is here, just not evenly distributed” — a reminder that small pockets of transformation can spark widespread change.

We aim to shape the field we work in and strive for a ‘massive small’ movement of change.

Helle Søholt, CEO, Founding Partner

The UN Global Compact as the standard for how we operate

As signatories to the United Nations Global Compact, Gehl operates and pursues projects according to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria.

Our initiatives include

• Measuring our annual operating emissions and continuously implementing strategies to reduce them
• Tracking our projects’ impacts against Gehl’s equitable, healthy, and sustainable criteria
• Traveling consciously and substituting sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) for business travel
• Using global best practices in sustainable urban design and challenging each project to a higher ESG standard