Eric Scharnhorst, project manager at Gehl Architects, argues for a wide-scale census instrument detailing city life, not just pedestrian counts and fatalities.
In a recent piece on Next City, Eric Scharnhorst discusses the Gehl database, which is full of physical data on how people use public spaces. Collectors record hourly pedestrian counts, gender, age, and stationary activities within the area (whether it's children playing, people walking through, waiting for transit, or sitting while eating lunch alone). Often, this provides advocates and urbanists the necessary quantified information to push for improvements in the public space arena.
Scharnhorst discusses how current databases such as the decennial Census and yearly American Community Survey lack indicators on urban diversity in the public space. While inequality exists in our residential patterns, how does that manifest itself in our public space usage habits?
In the piece, Scharnhorst writes about how "[the] reason cities don’t have this information is not because of technological limitations. It’s because of a shared resistance to doing the work in the first place. Although city planners map citywide Census-level socioeconomic categories like income and family size, they are hesitant to measure how people of different 'categories' mix in the public realm."
FULL STORY: We Need a Census for City Streets

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Trump deemed the landmark civil rights agreement “illegal DEI and environmental justice policy.”

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

The 120 Year Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees
More than a century ago, San Francisco mobilized to house thousands of residents displaced by the 1906 earthquake. Could their strategy offer a model for the present?

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Report: Zoning Reforms Should Complement Nashville’s Ambitious Transit Plan
Without reform, restrictive zoning codes will limit the impact of the city’s planned transit expansion and could exclude some of the residents who depend on transit the most.

Judge Orders Release of Frozen IRA, IIJA Funding
The decision is a victory for environmental groups who charged that freezing funds for critical infrastructure and disaster response programs caused “real and irreparable harm” to communities.
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