It is a fact that people’s well-being is very much influenced by the opportunities they are given in the city they live in; the city they bring life to.
The truth is that “People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything.” – Rem Koolhaas
Indeed, as Koolhaas continued saying, “that’s both liberating and alarming”. Through centuries we have seen how citizens adapt to cities that have been planned for them. But adapting doesn’t mean enjoying a good urban life.
We are now more than ever aware of how understanding the way people spend — or would want to spend — their time is a baseline for recommendations on how to improve the liveability of the city or neighbourhood in question. But how to do this in practice?
The data-driven approach to understanding how citizens interact with their city is not new. Already in the 60s, Jan Gehl (Danish architect proponent of people-focused urban development) would count how many people were in a space and then determine how they were using it. But are Gehl and his methods winning the battle of making our cities liveable? (more on this topic here)
"People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything.”
We couldn’t agree more with Gehl’s mindset and vision ourselves. We take the “cities for people” concept very seriously, and advocate for the creation of these cities actively through data and technology. The first step, as Gehl advanced, is to observe and record. We call this measuring. In this article, we aim to introduce one of the many approaches to measuring cities, which allows us to understand how people move.
A first step to study how citizens interact with their city is through the monitoring of Footfall data. To illustrate this, we will dive into our home city, Helsinki, and let the insights speak for themselves.
A cursory look at the latest 2021 Footfall overview (Fig. 1, above) quickly highlights the areas with the most activity. On top of the downtown area, these activity clusters are located in Töölö, Pasila, Kalasatama, Herttoniemi, Ruoholahti, Lauttasaari and Itäkeskus. It also shows the busy roads of Mannerheimintie, Kaisaniemenkatu and Hämeentie, the main roads which connect Helsinki centre to the rest of the city.
The Area Pulse graph on the left panel shows a general trend of increasing activity, confirming that COVID had been previously restricting people’s movements. This can also be observed from the area’s Activity Trend (Fig. 2, below). There is an increase of at least 30% in the movement of people. Another interesting observation is how the Daily Activity graph shows that movement is highest on Friday and then reduces over the weekend.
On further analysis, we detect that the Munkkiniemi area (Fig. 3, below) has significantly increased activity compared to the rest of Helsinki. Actually, it is highlighted as one of the most active neighbourhoods. The increase in the movement is higher in the second half of the week, from which we assume that it’s the timeframe people are engaging in outdoor activities in the area the most.
Opposed to this Activity Trend we find the Aalto University Campus, in Otaniemi, (Fig. 4, on the right) where, as expected, activity scores are lower during the weekends, with an average 33% reduction in movement.
It is worth mentioning how Fridays peak in (student) activity, followed by Mondays. Tuesdays seem to be the least popular of the weekdays to come to the campus.
Through Footfall analysis you can understand how active people are in areas you have never visited and have no visual reference or perception of. It also brings insight on when and where are the busiest connections between cities, or reveal people’s favourite summer attractions, as shown in the examples below. No worries, we will keep your favourite mushroom picking spots a secret.
In some cases, the increase or decrease of activity is explained by some kind of event or happening. For example, the Hospital area in Meilahti (Fig. 8, below) experienced a drastic increase of activity this summer 2021 as people got tested for COVID around their summer travel plans. In other cases, the insights obtained from the Footfall analysis uncover unexpected behaviour. For example, a really successful month of August for the shopping centre tenants in Kannelmaki’s Kauppakeskus Kaari (Fig. 9, below).
Measuring our cities from the people perspective allows to be aware of what is going on in such complex and fastly changing ecosystems. Awareness is the first step towards improvement through educated decision-making.
This Fall 2021 we will guide you through different ways of measuring the non-traditional aspect of our cities as a way of building more liveable places together.
Footfall, in general, is the number of people going through a particular area.
For retail businesses, Footfall analysis can be used to detect successful locations to open new stores in, to improve sales by adjusting your practices based on customers’ dwell times, or to reduce labor costs by planning your staff scheduling around customer visit peaks.
We support this Footfall analysis with demographic insights that allow you to locate your targeted customer segments (eg. young and working class).
Book a demo with our experts to explore the power of Footfall insights further.
Paloma Bautista actively pursues sustainable urban development powered by technology, data, and people, as the key to creating liveable cities for everyone. She holds a Master’s in Architecture and previously worked for the consultancy company serving Spain’s Ministry of Development. At CHAOS, she provides leadership and vision to ensure the business has effective people, operational controls, and administrative procedures in place. She is full of bad jokes, and is passionate about painting, dancing, and Excel sheets. Her superpower is to make things happen.
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