Why we care about public life and collect data on it

Public life encompasses the activities and behaviors people engage in in public space, including the routine and mundane activities of everyday life such as commuting or running errands. A vibrant public life promotes health, makes our cities safer, can lead to more civic engagement, and connects people to their communities.

The design of our cities and the public realm shapes public life. To improve places for tomorrow, it is essential to understand how people use and experience them today. Public life data creates a vital evidence feedback loop for city planners. Data gives city practitioners and urbanists the confidence to test major changes in public spaces, assess their impact, and fine-tune interventions, programs, or designs as needed.

Van Leer Foundation and Gehl created the Urban95 Public Life Data Framework to help city leaders, planners, and urbanists create an evidence basis on how their work influences childhood development — encouraging spaces where children can grow, learn, create, imagine, and play.

Urban95 Public Life Data Framework

The Urban95 Public Life Data Framework introduces Gehl’s tried and true public life data process, with a focus on the experience of small children and their families. It is a step-by-step guide to advance public life documentation and informed decision making for practitioners around the world.

By utilizing this framework and the corresponding tools and resources, you’ll be able to answer crucial questions such as: Where are activity hotspots? Who is invisible in public space? What’s popular and why? How does the city support or hinder people’s experiences?

Applying the framework is not a linear process. Whether working individually or as a team, you can choose the path that best suits your project. To get started, we recommend reviewing the entire framework, assessing the information you already have, identifying where you are in your project, and what process will best fit your goals and capacity.

Plan and define

Define constraints and challenges

Let’s kick off your public life data collection! Start by identifying the key challenges children and their families face in your community. Before collecting public life data, define the constraints that Public Life data can help mitigate. Then identify the constraints that could block a public life data project in terms of resources, feasibility or sustainability.

Try mapping core challenges and constraints as early as possible to best inform the project’s vision and by extension the data collection process.

Build a coalition

Engage stakeholders

A strong engagement plan and stakeholder coalition is essential for informing and sustaining a data-informed planning practice and to build alliances. Engaging stakeholders doesn’t stop at stage one, this can occur throughout any data process to ensure transparency and trust along the way.

Celebrate Public Life can be used here to learn what places the community values today.

Measure, test, refine

Create an evaluation plan to study public life

An evaluation plan can be simple or complex, what’s important is that it is useful for data collection. Create an evaluation plan according to the overall vision, the research question and the scale of the site. Consider how the plan will enhance accountability and transparency with project stakeholders and the community.

Urban95 Public Space Public Life Toolkit can be used to develop the plan.

Share and scale

Craft impact stories

Leverage data findings, resident stories, and visuals to craft a compelling narrative about your project. Engaging storytelling will strengthen opportunities to communicate and disseminate data stories to foster shared understanding. Storytelling is useful in different phases, from the analysis phase to the dissemination of results.

Identify an audience and tailor the project’s story effectively to inspire others to re-imagine public spaces, demonstrate impact, build a strong case for future funding, and document the project for long-term advocacy.

Urban95 is an initiative created by Van Leer Foundation to help city leaders, planners and urbanists understand how their work can influence child development. Van Leer Foundation supports cities to reframe their governance strategies, public policies, budget allocations, knowledge sharing, and training with an early years lens.

Family-centred urban planning and design is not only about building more playgrounds. Urban95 takes an integrated approach that combines improving urban spaces and providing services. By working across sectors and thinking holistically — cities can create urban environments that welcome families and encourage the healthy development of young children and also support the well-being of parents and other caregivers.