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Forward Thinking: Chattanooga Design Studio Surveying How Pedestrians Use Innovation District

Later this week, if you’re walking through downtown Chattanooga’s Innovation District, someone might be watching you to see how you’re using the space. 

The Chattanooga Design Studio is putting outa call for volunteers: people to help survey which corridors and blocks might need more park benches, or other features to help Chattanoogans better use and enjoy this part of the city.

Eric Myers is the Chattanooga Design Studio’s Executive Director.

“What we say is that we know a lot about the public realm,” Myers says, “usually through traffic, through automobiles. We count traffic routinely. But we don't really understand what human beings do in the public realm and observe that enough in order to put funds in the right place and make public improvements for human beings based on human observation.”

The Studio and the Enterprise Center are partnering with Gehl Studios, a Copenhagen-based planning and design firm. They’re conducting aPublic Spaces, Public Lifesurvey, which will help them plan how to make the innovation district’s sidewalks, parks and plazas more inviting.