This document discusses Jan Gehl's approach to urban site analysis, which focuses on studying public life through answering key questions: how many people are in an area, who they are, and where they are located. It provides details on methods for analyzing public spaces, including counting pedestrian flow, mapping behaviors, tracking selected individuals, and taking photographs. The goal is to understand how people use urban spaces and what design changes could improve the quality of public life.
2. Jan Gehl
Jan Gehl is a Danish architect and
urban design consultant based in
Copenhagen whose career has
focused on improving the quality of
urban life by re-orienting city design
towards the pedestrian and cyclist.
5. “How to Study Public Life”
1. How many
2. Who
3. Where
Urbanism I
6. “How to Study Public Life”
1. How many
Urbanism I
- how many people are moving (pedestrian flow)
- how many are staying in one place (stationary activity)
7. “How to Study Public Life”
2. Who
Urbanism I
Basic knowledge about the behavior of various groups of people can be used to plan more
precise ways of accommodating the needs of women, children, the elderly and disabled,
for example.
8. “How to Study Public Life”
3. Where
Urbanism I
The where question allows observers to zoom in on positioning relevant to function or elements such
as furniture, garden gates, entrances, doors, bollards, etc.
9. “How to Study Public Life”
Urbanism I
Mapping what happens in city space can provide specific knowledge of the types of activities in an
area, such as staying, commercial or physical activities, and the requirements these various
activities make on the physical environment
10. “How to Study Public Life”
Urbanism I
Walking speed and the amount of time spent staying can provide information about the quality of
physical frameworks.
Ex. The answers to these questions are relevant for
finding out how long we are willing to walk in order to use
public transport
13. Urbanism I
Mapping behavior is simply mapping what happens on a
plan of the space or area being investigated.
Ex. Benches, people, trees, shrubs, etc.
14. Urbanism I
Registering movement can provide basic knowledge about
movement patterns as well as concrete knowledge about
movements in a specific site.
The goal can be to gather information such as walking
sequence, choice of direction, flow, which entrances are used
most, which least, and so on.
15. Urbanism I
called shadowing or tracking
Follow selected people in order to register their movements. This
method is useful for measuring walking speed, or where, when and to
what extent certain activities take place along a route.
17. Urbanism I
Photographs and film can describe situations showing the interaction or lack thereof
between urban form and life.
18. Urbanism I
Keeping a diary can register events that cannot easily be documented using
more traditional methods. This example shows notes from a study of
residential streets in Melbourne, Australia.
