Gehl / Copenhagen Vesterbrogade 24, 5th floor 1620 Copenhagen V Denmark
T +45 32 95 09 51 mail@gehlpeople.com www.gehlpeople.com
Gehl / San Francisco 1211 Folsom Street, 4th Floor San Francisco CA 94102, USA
T +1 (415) 636 9130 mail-us@gehlpeople.com www.gehlpeople.com
Gehl / New York 395 Hudson Street, 8th Floor New York NY 10014, USA
T +1 (212) 537 6318 mail-us@gehlpeople.com www.gehlpeople.com
First and foremost I want to open this annual report by thanking everyone at Gehl for an amazing year! The levels of collaboration, enthusiasm, and positive energy that have flowed across every single Gehl team has made this a year to remember. I am grateful and happy to share a few highlights with you here.
We started our financial year with an internal reorganization of our teams to further strengthen our client relationships and enable the partnerships needed for us to expand our organizational reach. With that, we hit the ground running, seeing every Gehl team involved in global projects and inspiring challenges from public space and landscape design to delivering low carbon mobility networks, to engaging in the development of new sustainable neighborhoods and university campuses, to retrofitting and developing existing urban areas.
Then, only a few months into the year, I could proudly announce Gehl as the 11th member of the kyu collective! This represents an exciting leap forward for us, joining a collective of the world’s leading creative companies that share our passion for meaningful, progressive, human centered work. We entered an exclusive, curated network of individual companies that are changing the world for the better, and we’re now a proud part of it!
Upon joining the collective, kyu became a 30% minority owner of Gehl, further contributing to our brand recognition and unique position within the field of urban strategy and design. The collective and its networked model is strategically aligned with our culture and ways of working, and throughout the year we have continued to collaborate with several of the kyu companies such as IDEO, SYPartners, BEWorks, Godfrey Dadich and ATÖLYE. In fact 7,5% of our growth this past year has come from projects delivered in collaboration with kyu partners.
By joining the kyu collective, we’ve also established an amazing Board of Directors. It is such a treat to be working closely with, and learn directly from, Jakob Grane our Board Chair, Farah Golant, President of kyu, Tim Brown, Chair of IDEO, and Jessica Orkin, CEO at SYPartners. In May, we shared the most generous and inclusive virtual event, kyu kin days, to which I personally felt very proud of Gehl having become part of such a wonderful collective of companies. →
This is a collective that is building an active capacity. We collaborate across boundaries and believe in a collective that breathes, challenges, queries. Together.
Beyond our established markets, 2022 has seen significant growth into new geographies. An important addition to our portfolio has been projects across the Gulf region, both in collaboration with fellow kyu partners and independently.
This new body of work is important as we can contribute to more people centered and sustainable urban development in a region that has been traditionally dominated by traffic orientated planning. We are now engaged in both park projects in Abu Dhabi and the UAE, as well as National Urban Design Guidelines in Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the resultant physical changes in these projects, we hope that our expertise will continue to influence the shifting local paradigm of planning toward a more people orientated and regenerative model.
Back on home base, we have continued the development of new digital tools, launching the Eye Level City iPhone & Android app for crowdsourcing geocoded and annotated images. The app was first developed within our Industrial PhD led project; Urban Belonging, but has since progressed to become a Gehl-branded version.
Testament to its resonance, the app has already been used by our client at Stanford University to illustrate and unpack how the student community feels about campus spaces. We are really excited to have this qualitative tool that allows us to understand places and people in even more granular detail.
From our home in Copenhagen to New York and San Francisco, we have grown by more than 40% this year and continue to benefit from the internal exchange of people across our teams. Our increased team diversity undoubtedly helps bridge and strengthen the Gehl culture, leading to a constant evolution of our thinking and methods that continues to place us at the cutting edge of our field.
Once again, huge kudos to all Gehl people for delivering such positive impacts globally, and a sincere thank you to all our clients and collaborators. Together we are a source for good. Helle Søholt
Founding Partner & CEO
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Chairman, Jakob Grane
Gehlers’ continuous hard work and passion for being relevant in the world is a key enabler for embracing sustainable solutions and nailing the role as trusted advisor
Our team consists of Architects, Landscape Architects, Urban Designers, Social and Data Scientists, Strategists and Software Designers.
With 45 hires in 2022 including again having bright interns onboard, Gehl has grown with 37% to 113 employees working from our offices in New York, San Francisco and Copenhagen - and remotely across the globe.
As we continue to grow we are ensuring that this happens in line with our values and strategic goals to respect and reflect our Gehl-culture.
Bike or walking Car Public transportation
We are a dynamic team from varying backgrounds based in three offices across the globe
How we get to work
We are based in
Gehl’s relationship with the collective of creative organizations ‘kyu’ began in 2017, through a collaboration with IDEO and through creative industries forums, conferences and speaking arrangements. Gehl has also gotten to know kyu company, SYPartners, by sharing office space in their New York studio.
In February this year Gehl joined the kyu collective. The kyu Collective has acquired a 30% share of Gehl. The majority remains in the hands of the management team and partner group, and as such enables Gehl to grow as an independent company with management control and self-determining Board representation.
Our enrollment to the kyu Collective comes at a time when the world needs rapid, systemic change. The enduring pandemic has paradoxically slowed the world down whilst speeding up the need for change. The climate crisis is no longer an impending scenario but our greatest existing challenge. Our collective local actions will have great global consequences now, until 2030 and beyond. For Gehl, we see this partnership as a milestone in our growth, and a catalyst in our ambition to be part of the solutions that will help make the sustainable transition we so desperately need, now!
Gehl’s Board of Directors Jakob Grane (Chairman of The Board) Jessica Orkin (CEO of SYPartners) Helle Søholt (CEO Gehl) Farah Golant (President of kyu)
We’re a fully integrated master planning practice, serving our clients from visioning through implementation
We help cities, housing associations and campuses address climate, health and equity — strategically and at eye level
We help cities and foundations develop people-first and place-based solutions to create a healthier, more equitable world
We make people visible through data
We help foundations find place-based solutions to wicked problems
We help companies be good corporate citizens
Triggered by global events and engaging in projects in the gulf region the past year, we’ve had internal reflective and constructive conversations about our purpose, partners and human rights in line with our commitment to the UN Global Compact. This led to a refined description of ‘what we do’:
We address global trends with a people-focused approach, utilizing empirical analysis to understand how the built environment can support well-being.
The projects we do improve the quality of life for everyday citizens on the ground.
This means that we are not politically party bound but focus on making positive changes for all end users of the city. We apply this analysis to strategic planning and human-centered design to empower citizens, decision-makers, company leaders, and organizations.
We are open, respectful and inclusive with our clients, collaborators and internal Gehl team. This means allowing for and respecting different views, cultures and opinions, but we do not compromise with core humanistic values of equal human rights. We work for clients who are aligned with our values and who look to Gehl as partners in taking an action oriented approach to a transformation towards making cities more equitable, healthy and sustainable for all.
Gehl Group exceeded the years financial targets. Despite the continued consequences of COVID-19 and global instabilities impacting client sectors –mainly related to the war in Ukraine affecting inflation and energy prices – we landed a revenue of DKK 97.7 mill., 15% above the year’s target and equating to a year on year growth of 42%.
We experience that developers are searching for sustainable and human scale approaches to urban infill and transformation of existing urban areas and public space strategy, planning and design as well as implementation of sustainable mobility systems are becoming increasingly important. This has led to growth in the US with an increase of revenue from 45% to 48% of the Group total. We have also grown our portfolio of work with public sector clients in the US from 11% to 37%.
Over the past year we have offered more presence and devotion to developments in the Gulf region. This has been done by growing a team working from Copenhagen, Spain and Egypt supporting developments across the Gulf region with a spectrum of tasks for both government clients and developers. We have been engaged from national guidelines and policies to design strategies and development of full-scale design of parcs, and our work in this region has grown significantly from 2% to 21%.
Finally, we have further positioned our existing services, especially related to housing corporations and particularly lead by our Copenhagen Cities Team working with high-level national strategic to concrete analysis and advice on the continued development of housing areas for all, as seen in the first project highlight below.
Gehl is advising Denmark’s National Building Fund to include a strategic urban approach and knowledge throughout much of its portfolio of activities. This includes facilitating a review board to qualify how non-profit housing supports the National Building Fund to contribute to better cities, launching an idea competition that invites the international community to help shape the future of intergenerational neighbourhoods, and supporting the development of a new national rent model which will guide support from the foundation.
Year 2021 - ongoing Location Denmark Scale Across all cities Service Areas Organization strategy, positioning and tools Client Landsbyggefonden / The National Building Fund
Copenhagen, Denmark
Our society is aging rapidly. Over the next two decades we need to realise new models of living that can cater to the needs of seniors,, families, and young people alike. Supporting Denmark's' National Building Fund, Landsbyggefonden, we've created an ideas competition to spark innovative and relevant solutions to this grand challenge. Neighbourhoods for Generations will lead to the prototyping of housing and public realm solutions in two existing neighbourhoods in Denmark.
Smedeland Glostrup, DenmarkOn the outskirts of Copenhagen, we're working to transform a former 100% industrial site to a sustainability focused mixed use district. With new public transport infrastructure in the area, this Masterplan will help create a car-free district with public space design informed by the daily activities of children, families and the elderly.
Gehl has worked with the City of Munich to deliver a city-wide Socio-Spatial Study of the user patterns of publicly accessible spaces. The study is the first of its kind in Germany’s most densely populated city. Gehl with collaborators has completed a comprehensive analysis of multiple data sources. Gehl’s analysis includes the creation of 10 user group profiles to provide the perspective of different distinct groups of people living in the city – making it one of the first times in one of Germany’s major cities that user profiles has been used to bring a people-first perspective to an urban development analysis of this type.
Bogotá, Colombia
50% of Bogotá's population suffers from food insecurity. Informal and unplanned growth on the city's outskirts keep people from eating well. As a response, we developed key strategies and pilot projects in four neighborhoods in Bogotá that advance healthy lifestyles and improve access to healthy food.
The Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability seeks to accelerate solutions to the global climate crisis.
To achieve this goal, the school not only needs new facilities, but more importantly a cultural shift towards cross-disciplinary collaboration, collectivism, and camaraderie. Gehl is leading the engagement process and strategic organization design to advance the establishment of the vision, values, structure and physical program for SDSS , setting the parameters for how spatial design informs culture and vice versa.
Year 2021 - ongoing Location Palo Alto, California Scale 14 acres Service Areas Strategic Organization Design Client Stanford University
Korneuburg,
Gehl as helped SIGNA qualify the planning of a new neighbourhood in Korneuburg - just on the edge of Vienna, Austria - the aim is not only to create a carbon neutral development, but to invite for sustainable behaviour everyday. Gehl has led the masterplan, public space plan and landscape plan while collaborating with 6 great international building architects in an integrated design process.
Wellington, New Zealand
As Wellington identifies climate change as its biggest challenge, and with a programme of change underway, we conducted a PSPL study to identify the city center's strengths and growing pains, and propose a number of strategic moves. The report will be used to assist in validating Wellington's urban development projects, ensuring a focus on the public realm as a core protagonist in a more resilient, social and connected city.
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton University wish to make the on-campus pedestrian and micro-mobility experience for students, faculty and visitors irresistible. Working as Princeton's mobility consultant, the Gehl team developed a series of interventions and facilities improvements – built on a system wide analysis of current flows, experiences, and aspirations – to realize this first-in-class mobility for the University.
San Mateo, California
The Hillsdale Shopping Center is being re-envisioned for the future as a vibrant mixed-use development, led by the Gehl team, that will transform a historic shopping destination into a contemporary, complete neighborhood. Gehl designed and staffed a living storefront in the shopping center as a platform for gathering community input and building trust as the design project evolves.
Favrholm is one of Denmark's largest greenfield developments, set to become home to 4,000 residents and 10,000 workers. With unique nature on its doorstep, and a new stadium and sports complex as a focal point, the Gehl led Masterplan Framework integrates green spaces, movement, sport, and community into the urban fabric. An open and transparent collaborative process, as well as maintaining a flexible approach throughout the project, led to a vision that was approved unanimously by all 27 members of the Hillerød City Council.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, unhealthy urban lifestyles and obesogenic food environments contribute to some of the highest child obesity rates in the world. Teaming up with UNICEF we looked at two cities, Mexico City and Santiago de Chile, to collect data on foodscapes, and children and their caregivers everyday lives. Gender inequality, accessibility to fresh products, and insecurity in public spaces were identified as barriers for children to move and eat well. 17 project ideas and recommendations were developed to try counter these findings.
Rochester, Minnesota
A PSPL for the Destination Medical Center Peace Plaza in Rochester, Minnesota, taking a look at how the plaza is serving the needs of residents and Mayo clinic patients alike.
Gehl has, in close collaboration with the City of Karlsruhe, and based on workshops with stakeholders and other data collection, prepared an urban space and mobility plan for Karlsruhe. The goal has been to further develop the central city districts both commercially and as residential areas, to further reduce car traffic (including CO2 emissions) and to ensure the best possible use of recent, extensive investments in roads and light rail.
Santa Ana, California
Gehl– the lead Masterplanner for Related Companies’ largest project nationwide – is heralding the creation of Santa Ana’s newest neighborhood: a dense, vibrant and liveable, mixed use development that will become the standard for contemporary urban renewal and community building.
Gehl were entrusted to deliver Saudi Arabia's first National Urban Design Guidelines that support the ambitious goals of Vision 2030. The guidelines serve as a foundation for decision-makers, government and local authorities, consultants and local communities to enable delivery of a people-first urban transformation - balancing bold ambitions with on the ground experience, to make it easier for people to spend time together outdoors.
We have worked closely with local partners to develop a shared vision and a team of local designers to build capacity in the region.
Year 2021 Location Saudi Arabia Scale National Service Areas Policy Development, Urban Strategy and Organizational Training Client MoMRAH - Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs and Housing
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Cambridge, Massachusetts
There’s no shortage of public spaces in Cambridge; however, understanding how these spaces function and how they might better serve the community is a priority. Gehl is working with the City to better understand how a city can create design guidelines informed by public life and quality of experience.
Chicago, Illinois
The Chicago DOT (CDOT) and Illinois DOT are making significant investments to improve the North DuSable Lake Shore Drive roadway infrastructure along the city’s lakefront. Now, with a preferred functional roadway layout established, CDOT has partnered with Gehl to develop people-first concept designs for planned improvements that will increase connectivity between the city and the lakefront.
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Mountain View, California
Gehl began partnering with the City of Mountain View in 2020 to study existing public life and public space, pilot solutions, facilitate community engagement, and develop a concept street design for the heart of Downtown. As an economic recovery response, Gehl was engaged to expand the client’s scope of work to include a street closure pilot. Phase II of the project looks to expand the scope across three blocks of Castro Street and adapt the initial street closure pilot into a longer term solution that will continue to encourage vibrant life along the corridor.
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Detroit and Buffalo, USA
Impact assessment in partnership with the RJWF, KaBOOM!, and The Skatepark Project to assess the efficacy of the program’s play-space investments across Detroit and Buffalo. / Leading a multi-method assessment of over 90 playspaces and skateparks across three states and the surrounding regions, to understand the spaces’ impact on youth and community development.
Cultural and economic trends have dramatically shifted retail landscape of the 21st century. To keep pace with these changes, the Bohannon Group engaged Gehl as lead masterplanning team to create a vision for the future of their shopping center site on the Peninsula into a vibrant, economically successful, and environmentally sustainable public space for the community.
Using a multifaceted approach – that includes community engagement and the development of a masterplanning framework – the Gehl team is tackling these specific challenges while also establishing a clear and ambitious vision for the site in collaboration with the leadership partners and the community.
Year 2022 Location San Mateo, CA Scale 52 acres
Service Areas Vision, Master Planning, Community Engagement, Graphic Design, Website Design Client Bohannan Development Company & Northwood Invstors
The Gehl Lens describes our portfolio of digital tools that enable the planning, observation and analysis of public life and public space. Providing these platforms to our clients allows for customizable processes and intuitive data collection. With our methods, we wish to enable surveyors to observe and better understand how people use public spaces all over the world. Using digital technology enables us to be more intuitive and even remote without compromising the local and qualitative approach.
Digitisation is increasingly altering all aspects of society, offering new ways to produce, consume, and live. At Gehl we have an inhouse R&D team focusing on unfolding the potentials in use of digital tools and new methods paving the way for innovation on numerous levels. Besides being crucial when coming to better understanding behavioural patterns in regards to use of public spaces or when and why people feel they belong in a city, digitalization in Gehl also contributes to a positive climate change, enabling us to decrease number of trips in specific projects.
Updated tools to examine Public Space, in addition to Public Life.
New functionality that supports deep dive studies about foodscapes - what food options are here, and how do people interact / engage with food?
Extended capabilities for gathering knowledge about how children and caretakers use public space.
crowdsourcing of qualitative data, in order to examine the city through the eyes of its citizens.
The app enables collection of annotated photos and geospatial data (static locations & routes)
Can support gathering insights around themes like belonging, inclusion and accessibility.
a certain area.
Isochrone mapping uncovers urban reach by different movement modes (pedestrians, cars, bikes)
insights
We’ve gathered data from 95 unique cities with the Public Life App 44 this year alone
610.500 people counted in 2022 with the Public Life App More than 2m observations in total
1800+ images has been taken with the Eye Level City App
➔ A centrally located and universally accessible digital tool that guides Gehl design and strategy towards the best possible climate impact and engage clients around upstream planning decisions that allows us to see the impact on the carbon footprint of adding shared spaces and amenities.
➔ A tool that helps project teams to set ambitious goals, evaluate scenarios and make decisions
➔ Evidence and storytelling about Gehl’s climate impact using consistent, rigorous metrics
➔ A framework for future tools
This year, we calculated our annual operational emissions footprint going back to 2019 and are in the process of setting our own Net Zero plan to align with a 1.5º path for the planet. We selected the ESG reporting software Plan A as our emissions benchmarking partner and input our data for benchmarking, including conducting company-wide surveys to acquire needed data. Internally, we are engaging across our Gehl teams to make the shift towards lower-carbon practices, and externally, we are engaging with our Kyu community to move together towards climate action. Our efforts and results will be elaborated in our UN Global Compact Communication on Progress (March, 2023)
As illustrated in our Project Highlights Section, Gehl undertook a number of client projects with a climate focus such as Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability - visioning and programming for the new school focused on climate change, and Integration, as well as Concept for Sharing of Functions in Favrholm "Stadion Quarter" Masterplan in Hillerød, Denmark.
Our Partner and Director, Blaine Merker, joined the kyu climate action leads group in March. Gehl co-led a climate focus session at kyu Kin days. In October, Blaine took over from IDEO as co-chair of the kyu climate micro-community.
We participated in a number of talks with a climate focus, such as:
"Climate - we shape the future" Climate Summit Danske Arkitekter, by CEO Helle Søholt
"Experience of low carbon spatial planning in CPH"
Zero carbon Urban Blocks Conference, China, by Director and Kristian Villadsen
“Let’s Talk Architecture & Partnerships of Change”, Citizen Sustainability Summit, Consulate General of Denmark, by Director Julia Day
"Addressing climate change through urban design"
Europaforum, by Managing Director Henriette Vamberg
“A
WHO Healthy Cities Annual Business Meeting & Technical Conference, by Associate Louise Kielgast
collaborative effort towards better air quality for people”
With the constant evolution of digital communication, social media engagement, and ‘fluctuating collective attentions spans’ it is a recurring question as to where Gehl content is best received, and ultimately seen by clients, partners, industry peers, friends of house, and new eyes alike. In 2022, we have made a slight reduction in website based content, and focused on sharing timely social media content that represent our activities and speaking engagements. Prioritising LinkedIn and Instagram, we have seen an uptick in engagement and particularly ‘shares’ which we interpret as a sign that what we post resonates with our followers.
Our work continues into 2023 to increase our posting frequency to ensure, at least in a digital world, that Gehl, its people, and activities are known amongst our global audience. We will also be building on foundations laid this year, to strengthen cooperation between Gehl’s business development and communications teams to ensure that we not only represent our
current work to the standards it deserves, but also play a proactive role in outreach to new followers and potential clients.
With that, we must again recognise all the fantastic people within our digital community. The likes and shares are one thing, but the amount of content that we are tagged and mentioned in, despite not being involved in that work is humbling. It shows that Gehl is recognised as a proponent and protagonist for progressive, positive, thoughtful and empathetic urban action, validating our continued mission to build healthy, sustainable and equitable urban places the world over.
As a management team, we are alert to the global challenges we are facing and the ones emerging.
It remains unreal and devastating that the war in Ukraine is now in its nine month. The COP27 reminded us once again about inherent political dilemmas and different levels of commitment to emissions-cutting targets. And recent unprecedented protests in China and Iran reflects among other that young people seem to be bolder than protesters before them.
The world’s challenges are larger than any one company can deal with, which leads us towards strengthening partnerships. We will stay agile by operating with scenario planning – something we as an organization learned when covid peaked.
We will nurture and sustain our strong Gehl culture and passion for being relevant in an increasingly digital and hybrid organization.
And equally important, we continue to develop the ecosystems we are a part of and that makes us stronger. New kyu partners are joining the collective and we are now 18 companies who work together towards a higher order impact.
In the year to come we will continue to deepen existing client relationships in the markets where we are based, and in addition we continue to build our strong new team engaging with clients in the Gulf.
We are scaling our engagement supporting enterprise clients understand their societal contract, their impact on communities and place-related dependencies to deliver not only livable cities but ‘livable companies’.
And we are continuing to lead climate initiatives, and health and equity outcomes of projects related to implementation of mobility systems, public spaces and new neighborhoods for all.
I wish you all a holiday season filled with love and time with your dear ones and look forward to a new exciting year for Gehl in 2023.
Thank you, Helle
Shared lunch at the San Francisco Office
This year we are donating to the following organizations with bases in the home cities of our three offices, working to enable change aligned with our work of ‘making cities for people:’
● Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (NYC)
● Transportation Alternative (NYC)
● Alemany Farm, project of Earth Island Institute (SF)
● San Francisco Bike Coalition
● Game - Creating social change through youth-led street sports and culture (Cph)
● Danish Refugee Council - Basic humanitarian help to families in Ukraine