Main Streets Streetscape

Client The City of Calgary
Location Calgary | Alberta | Canada

As the City of Calgary looks towards creating a more resilient and adaptive city, the Main Streets Program will provide direction for the planning, design, and construction of improvements to these essential community social spaces.

Main streets are essential to the identity and wellbeing of Calgary’s communities. They act as a public gathering space for residents, an exciting destination for visitors, and provide economic opportunity for local business. At its core, the main street program will aim to address the four principles of a social and healthy environment, mobility and functionality, character and identity, and economic vitality.

The Main Streets Streetscape Metrics Manual project will develop the methodology and practice of collecting and measuring metrics that are linked to the four principles. For this project, O2 will be using both qualitative and quantitate data capture and analysis techniques to develop a robust and extensive list of metrics. This will provide real insight for the City’s streetscape design evaluation.

Along with observational and online surveys, O2 is employing latest technologies for analyzing big geo-spatial data sets (from location-based services (LBS), from social media applications (e.g Strava and from sensors + counters). There are millions of records in big data, providing a rich sample to understand trends and patterns of usage and activity. Another advantage of analysis of such data set is the ability to retrieve historical patterns of activity and usage. Analyzing this data, in combination with census and economic datasets, will provide insights of usage profiles that will help in evaluation of the Main Streets Program principles in detail.

As part of the project, O2 will also develop a dashboard for the City to query, analyze and visualize the data in a multi-dimensional mode.