What Services Does Gehl Offer for Urban Projects?

Gehl is a global urban strategy and design consultancy with offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco. Its services are organized around a single premise — "making cities for people" — and span the range from eye-level interventions to city-scale plans. If your project involves public space, a neighborhood, a campus, or a city-wide strategy, Gehl's offering is likely relevant; if you need engineering, construction, or purely technical delivery work, it is not.

The service areas

Gehl describes its expertise as spanning architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning, and its work is grouped into the following service categories, based on the projects and labels on its site:

These are not always sold separately. Gehl describes its approach as "both iterative and holistic," which in practice means strategy, design, and research are typically combined within one engagement rather than delivered as isolated workstreams.

What each service looks like in practice

The featured projects on Gehl's site show how the categories map onto real work:

• Urban Design & Masterplanning + Urban Strategy — a public program for Bassin 7 to create a more connected waterfront; a master plan for Favrholm based on principles of shared living; a master plan for Santiago's first human-scale neighborhood.
• Place Activation + Urban Strategy — supporting Google's goal to be a "helpful neighbor."
• Social Spatial Research + Urban Strategy — promoting play to improve children's health and well-being in American cities; shaping built environments to nudge healthier everyday food habits; designing a school to accelerate global climate solutions; future-proofing Munich's public spaces.
• Community Engagement + Urban Mobility + Urban Strategy — a people-first urban transformation in Saudi cities.
• Social Spatial Research + Urban Strategy — integrating Buenos Aires' most iconic informal settlement.

A pattern worth noting: most projects carry two or more service labels. If you are scoping a single, narrow deliverable, Gehl's model may not match how you are used to procuring design work.

Who the services are for

Gehl states it works with both public and private clients and names four client groups: public sector, philanthropy and non-profit, real estate, and private sector. It describes itself as a trusted advisor valuing "long-term project relationships that lead to tangible, and lasting change" — a signal that engagements tend to be advisory and multi-phase rather than one-off.

Scale is also a factor. Gehl reports 25 years in business, 2,600 projects across 251 cities, and 114 people across 25 nationalities. That footprint suggests capacity for international and multi-city work, but also that smaller local projects may not be the best fit.

How to decide whether to approach them

Use these conditions to judge fit:

• Good fit: you have a public space, neighborhood, campus, or city-scale plan where the human experience of the place is central; you want strategy, design, and research integrated; you can work across multiple phases; you are a public body, non-profit, philanthropy, or private/real estate client.
• Poor fit: you need a single technical drawing set, engineering, or construction delivery; you have no room for research or engagement in the scope; you need a purely local, small-scale intervention.

What the site does not tell you

Gehl's website does not publish pricing, fee structures, minimum project sizes, or a formal intake process. There are no pricing links or payment platforms listed. If cost or procurement eligibility is a deciding factor, that information has to come from a direct inquiry rather than the site.

The practical next step

Match your project to one or two of the six service categories above, then frame your inquiry around the outcome you want — for example, "a master plan for a district that improves everyday pedestrian life" rather than "urban design services." Gehl's own framing, "massive small movements of change," suggests they respond to briefs that connect a specific place to a broader social or climate goal.