Social Spatial Research

Our Social Spatial Research services combine data — from high-level to eye-level — to uncover how places truly perform for people. As an industry leader in urban research, we layer multi-source data sets, synthesize them, and draw out insights that point to the qualities and limitations of how people use and experience a space. Gehl’s planners and data scientists translate data into meaningful human-centric stories, providing insights and recommendations that help guide your organization’s policy, urban strategy, spatial design, and programming decisions. Our approach not only identifies areas for improvement but also amplifies the voices of communities to develop collaborative and impactful solutions.

At Gehl, we leverage a comprehensive suite of methods and digital tools designed to gather, analyze, and interpret data about public space, public life, and lived experience. Through the use of digital engagement platforms, apps and human-centered processes, our goal is to capture thick, nuanced data, in order to understand what matters when designing places.

Our cornerstone methodology, Public Life Public Space, has been applied in over 250+ cities globally, translating collected data into meaningful stories, policy recommendations, and urban strategies. Our in-house developed tool, The Public Life App, supports the collection of powerful eye-level data about how a city works for its people, enabling us to work faster and more nuanced, without compromising quality.

Complementing this, our specialized digital tools analyze key facets of public spaces — enabling us to gather amenity data, evaluating facade quality, assessing travel times, and exploring urban ecology. To truly capture the lived experience, we integrate AI technologies with ethnographic methods such as workshops, focus groups, and intercept surveys, as well as new apps for citizen-led data collection. By layering these approaches, we gain a deeper understanding of the city at eye level, from the viewpoint of its most important asset — its people.