Introducing: A free tool to study public life
Happy Cities’ award-winning Public Life Study tool helps organizations measure how people feel and act in shared spaces.
Some news: We've decided to release our award-winning Public Life Study tool today, for free!
Since the pandemic, public space projects have gained new life. Cities, planners, and community members alike recognize that shared spaces are critical to our health and wellbeing.
But we often lack the data to understand why a particular space is working or not, or whether it is truly inclusive of everyone in a community.
Many years ago, we developed a unique Public Life Study tool to start answering these questions. In short, it offers a flexible, low-barrier method for community organizations, planners, and residents to measure changes in health, happiness, and inclusion in shared spaces.
We spent years developing and refining the methodology, working with cities from Vancouver to Halifax to measure the impacts of big and small changes, like transforming a street block into a public plaza, or adding a summer events program to a shared space.
But we haven’t yet seen impact we want to create.
Our Public Life Studies have helped city staff tweak and improve public space projects, and understand who is or isn't represented in a space. But it's not just cities who are doing this work. Many community organizations don't have the resources to hire researchers to assess the great work they are doing.
They see impactful changes and hear positive feedback from community members. But funders—and municipalities—often want hard data before they will invest more in community-led projects.
By releasing our Public Life Study tool for free, Happy Cities aims to:
Build capacity among community-led organizations to measure the impact of their initiatives.
Generate more evidence around the wellbeing impacts of welcoming public spaces.
Advocate for greater investment in community-led placemaking and public space transformations.
Because great public spaces are for everyone.
