Work
Announcing the winners of our Open Call!
Gehl Institute is thrilled to announce the winners of our Open Call: Proposals for Public Life competition! This summer, we trained three equity-focused design teams to deploy the tools we’ve developed (some tried and true, others newer and more experimental) to study the impacts of their projects in public space. The program’s underlying questions […]
News
Announcing the Public Life Data Protocol
If you’re familiar with the work of Jan Gehl, you probably know his saying that we should “measure what we care about.” In the case of cities, it’s important to not just measure car traffic or property values, but also the activities of people in public space. By tangibly capturing how people relate to their urban environments, we […]
News
Spaces and Places of Protest
Racial segregation in U.S. cities is no accident. As historians have extensively documented, our unequal social landscape is in large part the result of specific urban policies, from redlining and zoning to highway construction and suburban incorporation. These are the banal instruments that have shaped economic and health disparities in communities across the country. [1] […]
News
A Mayor’s Guide to Public Life!
Gehl Institute is thrilled to announce the release of A Mayor’s Guide to Public Life, with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. There are few greater legacies a mayor can leave behind than investing in public life: the everyday social life of streets, parks and plazas, and spaces between buildings. When […]
Dialogue
Can a Trash Can Reveal a Community’s Values?
What can the U.S. learn from Copenhagen about designing public spaces to foster healthier, more inclusive communities? One of the most striking cultural symbols upon arriving in Copenhagen is the sheer number of cyclists navigating city streets—in fact bicycles outnumber cars! But during my recent visit, it was the trash cans that actually caught my eye. […]
Event
Webinar on Health, Equity, Design, and Community Engagement
| New York (Online)
This free webinar will address urban designers and other professionals on the importance of early, sustained, and genuine engagement with local communities—residents, business owners, neighborhood organizations, and leaders—to understand their history, dynamics and unique needs, challenges and opportunities. Health Equity Initiative will share its expertise on effective strategies to engage and empower communities to […]
Work
BenchMark at MIT: Smart Furniture Uses Gehl Tools
Gehl Institute is proud to announce the launch of BenchMark: an project that uses street furniture to measure the diverse benefits of social interaction in public space. Moveable benches and signs at one of MIT’s busy quads are embedded with sensors for measuring public life according to Gehl methods. Over the course of a few […]
Dialogue
Spaces of Play, Part 2
By Stella Marren, Intern at Gehl Institute For Part 2 of our “Spaces of Play” series, we spoke with George Vellonakis of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Vellonakis was behind the 2007 redesign of Washington Square Park in New York City, and today serves as both Washington Square Park Administrator and […]
Dialogue
Spaces of Play, Part 1
By Stella Marren, Intern at Gehl Institute Every kid deserves access to quality public spaces for play. We at Gehl Institute are always interested in learning from activists and professionals with different approaches to achieving their vision of a more kid-friendly public realm. For this “Spaces of Play” two-part series, we chatted with James Siegal, CEO of […]
Dialogue
Street Food Markets & Inclusion
By Ida Christensen, Intern at Gehl Institute At their best, open-air street markets foster lively neighborhood settings in which people can mix and celebrate community life. Residents and visitors alike head to markets not only to buy goods, but also to experience the everyday pulse of life in a city. [1] Over the past decade, open-air […]
Event
Improving the Physical Environment to Advance Health Equity: Case Studies in Community Engagement
| New York (Online)
Please join us for a free webinar on urban design, health equity, and community engagement on July 19, 1:00 to 2:00 PM (EDT). The webinar will employ three case studies to demonstrate community engagement strategies in successful and innovative urban design projects. Speakers from KaBOOM!, ARCHIVE Global, and Friends of Bushwick Inlet […]
Event
Tools for Change – Public Life Matters
| Copenhagen
This summer, Shin-pei Tsay, Executive Director of Gehl Institute, and David Sim, Partner and Creative Director at Gehl, will co-host “Tools for Change” with a focus on public life. Public life is what happens when people connect in public space, and can be an impetus to increase inclusivity, improve health, expand access to opportunities, and […]
Dialogue
A Reflection on POPS
By Stella Marren, Intern at Gehl Institute. If you’re exploring Midtown Manhattan, you might notice the presence of small, mostly empty paved plazas at the base of skyscrapers. These banal spaces are the result of a specific policy tool meant to encourage public life and access to natural light in New York City while also […]
Dialogue
What We Can (and Can’t) Learn from Copenhagen
The following text by Martin C. Pedersen was originally published by Common Edge, and has been reposted with the author’s permission. I spent four glorious days in Copenhagen recently and left with an acute case of urban envy. (I kept thinking: It’s like..an American Portland—except better.) Why can’t we do cities like this in the […]