gehlpeople.com

Gehl is a global urban strategy and design consultancy that works with public sector bodies, philanthropy and non-profit organizations, real estate developers, and private sector clients. Organizations collaborate with Gehl through long-term project relationships rather than one-off transactions, typically starting with a project inquiry to one of its offices in Copenhagen, New York, or San Francisco. If your organization is planning a project that involves how people experience, move through, or gather in urban space, Gehl is structured to take it on — the sections below explain who they serve, what they actually do, and how to start a conversation.

Who Gehl Works With

Gehl describes its client base across four categories:

The consultancy frames this as "we speak public and private" — meaning it positions itself as a trusted advisor across sectors rather than specializing in one. Its stated preference is for long-term project relationships that produce tangible, lasting change, so it is a better fit for multi-phase or ongoing engagements than for a single quick deliverable.

What Gehl Actually Does

Gehl's expertise spans architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning. Its approach is described as both iterative and holistic, and it emphasizes empirical analysis and designing for social behavior.

Its services cluster into a few recurring areas visible across its project portfolio:

• Urban design & masterplanning — large-scale plans for districts and neighborhoods, such as a master plan for Santiago's first human-scale neighborhood or a shared-living master plan for Favrholm.
• Urban strategy — long-range planning work, including future-proofing Munich's public spaces and delivering people-first urban transformation in Saudi cities.
• Place activation — programming to bring spaces to life, such as a public program for the Bassin 7 waterfront.
• Social spatial research — studying how people actually use space, as in work on children's health and play in American cities or on everyday food habits.
• Community engagement — involving residents directly, including in Buenos Aires' most iconic informal settlement.

A useful way to think about fit: Gehl works at what it calls the "eye-level to high-level" range — from how a single street or plaza feels to city-wide strategy. If your project sits entirely outside the built environment or public realm, it is likely not a match.

Scale and Track Record

Gehl reports the following figures about its practice:

• 25 years in business
• 2,600 projects across 251 cities
• 34 awards and recognitions
• 114 people across 25 nationalities

This matters for collaboration decisions in two ways. First, the geographic spread means Gehl has likely worked in a context similar to yours, which can shorten the learning curve. Second, the staff size relative to project volume suggests a lean, senior-heavy model — worth knowing if you expect a large dedicated team on site.

How to Start a Collaboration

Gehl operates through offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco. The practical route to working with them is a project inquiry through the website, directed to the office closest to your region or project.

Before reaching out, it helps to have ready:

1. The project scope — is this a masterplan, a strategy, a research study, or activation programming?
2. The site and scale — a single plaza, a district, a city-wide policy?
3. Your sector and decision structure — public, philanthropic, real estate, or private, and who signs off.
4. Timeline and phase — early visioning, mid-design, or implementation support.

Because Gehl emphasizes long-term relationships, inquiries framed around an ongoing partnership or a multi-stage project tend to align better with how the firm positions itself than requests for a standalone one-off service.

Is Gehl the Right Fit?

Gehl is a strong candidate if your project centers on the human experience of urban space, involves public realm, mobility, or community engagement, and benefits from cross-sector credibility. It is a weaker fit if you need purely technical engineering, private interior work, or a fast, low-engagement deliverable.

The clearest next step is to contact the office nearest your project with a short brief covering scope, site, sector, and timeline.

Gehl is a global urban strategy and design consultancy that puts the human lived experience at the forefront of urban development. Its approach combines empirical analysis of how people actually behave in public space with an iterative, holistic design process, with the stated goal of creating inclusive neighborhoods, a sense of belonging, and the conditions for purposeful climate action. This explainer is for anyone trying to understand what distinguishes Gehl's method from conventional urban planning before deciding whether to study it, cite it, or engage a firm with a similar philosophy.

The core idea: design for people, not just for buildings

Gehl describes itself as being "in the business of relationships between people, their communities, and the broader systems that sustain the planet." That framing matters because it sets the unit of analysis: not the building, the road, or the master plan in isolation, but the interaction between people and the built environment at the scale where daily life happens.

The company's own positioning captures this as working "from eye-level to high-level" — meaning it connects the ground-level experience of a street or plaza to city-wide strategy. Its expertise spans architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning, so the human-scale observation and the strategic plan are treated as one continuous problem rather than separate disciplines.

How the method works

1. Start with empirical analysis of social behavior

Rather than beginning with a design concept, Gehl's stated method begins with observation and data about how people use space. The company says it addresses global challenges "using empirical analysis, designing for social behavior to create meaningful and lasting change." In practice, this means the design brief is derived from evidence about movement,停留 (dwelling), and interaction patterns — not from assumptions about what a place should look like.

2. Design iteratively and holistically

Gehl describes its approach as "both iterative and holistic, ensuring solutions are adaptable and integrated." Two things are happening here:

• Iterative — proposals are tested, revised, and retested rather than fixed at the outset.
• Holistic — a change in one part of the system (a street, a waterfront, a school) is considered in relation to the wider neighborhood and city.

This is why Gehl's project list mixes scales: a waterfront public program, a school designed to accelerate climate solutions, a master plan for a human-scale neighborhood, and social spatial research all sit under the same method.

3. Aim at inclusion, belonging, and climate action

The stated responsibility is to create "inclusive neighborhoods and spaces that foster a sense of belonging and empower people to take purposeful climate action." The climate goal is framed as something that follows from people feeling ownership of their public spaces — "massive small movements of change" — rather than as a separate technical target.

What this looks like in practice

Gehl's featured work illustrates how the method translates across contexts:

The pattern: the same people-first, evidence-led method is applied to waterfronts, schools, informal settlements, and national urban programs.

Scale and track record

Gehl reports the following figures about its practice:

• 25 years in business
• 2,600 projects across 251 cities
• 34 awards and recognitions
• 114 people across 25 nationalities
• Offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco

It works with both public and private clients — public sector, philanthropy and non-profit, real estate, and private sector — and describes itself as valuing long-term project relationships that lead to tangible, lasting change.

How to decide if this approach is relevant to you

Gehl's method is a good fit to study or emulate if your problem is:

• Human-scale but strategically connected — you need to link street-level experience to a city-wide or organizational strategy.
• Behavior-dependent — the outcome depends on how people actually use a space, not just how it is built.
• Multi-disciplinary — architecture, landscape, planning, and social research all need to inform one solution.
• Long-term and relationship-based — you want a partner or framework that adapts over time rather than delivering a fixed master plan.

It is less suited to problems where the brief is purely technical, purely architectural, or where there is no mandate to observe and respond to how people behave.

Where to go next

If you want to understand the method more deeply, the most useful entry points are Gehl's own project descriptions — they show the method applied rather than described. Reading several across different scales (a waterfront, a school, a national program) will make the common logic visible: observe how people behave, design iteratively for that behavior, and connect the result to the wider system.

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.

Gehl is a global urban strategy and design consultancy with offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco. Its portfolio spans neighborhood-scale interventions to citywide strategies, and the featured projects below show the range of that work: waterfront public programs, place activation, informal settlement integration, and master plans. If you want to understand Gehl's capabilities through concrete examples rather than service descriptions, this is the place to start.

The portfolio at a glance

Gehl's featured projects fall into a few recurring service categories. The same project often combines more than one.

What the projects show about Gehl's range

From a single waterfront to a whole city

The Bassin 7 project is described as a public program to foster a vibrant and more connected waterfront — a defined site with a public-life goal. At the other end of the scale, Gehl is building a master plan for Favrholm on the principles of shared living, and a master plan for Santiago's first human-scale neighborhood. The Saudi cities work is framed as delivering a people-first urban transformation across cities, not a single block.

Social goals, not just physical design

Several projects start from a social outcome rather than a built form:

• Play and children's health — promoting play to improve children's health and well-being in American cities.
• Healthier everyday food habits — shaping built environments to nudge healthier food choices.
• Informal settlement integration — integrating Buenos Aires' most iconic informal settlement.
• Climate solutions — designing a school to accelerate global climate solutions.

Working with private and public clients

Gehl states it speaks "public and private," serving public sector, philanthropy and non-profit, real estate, and private sector clients. The Google project — upholding the company's goal to be a helpful neighbor — is an example of private-sector place activation.

How Gehl describes its own approach

Gehl says its expertise spans architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning, and that it addresses global challenges using empirical analysis and designing for social behavior. The approach is described as both iterative and holistic, so solutions stay adaptable and integrated. Under its responsibility work, the firm frames itself as being "in the business of relationships between people, their communities, and the broader systems that sustain the planet," with a focus on inclusive neighborhoods and spaces that foster belonging.

Scale of the practice

Gehl reports the following figures:

• 25 years in business
• 2,600 projects across 251 cities
• 34 awards and recognitions
• 114 people across 25 nationalities

These numbers give a sense of how far the practice reaches beyond the featured examples above.

What this means if you are evaluating Gehl

If your project resembles one of the featured types — a waterfront or public space program, a neighborhood or city master plan, community engagement, or social spatial research — Gehl's published portfolio shows direct precedent. If your interest is in a specific city or sector, the featured list is a starting point rather than a complete record; the firm cites 2,600 projects across 251 cities, so the published examples are a sample.

Gehl is a global urban strategy and design consultancy that describes its mission as "making cities for people." It works with public and private clients on projects ranging from urban strategy and masterplanning to place activation and social spatial research, with offices in Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco. If you are looking for a firm that combines architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, and city planning with an emphasis on human behavior and lived experience, Gehl is one of the established practices in that space.

What Gehl actually does

Gehl positions itself as a consultancy rather than a traditional architecture firm. Its stated expertise spans four overlapping fields:

• Architecture
• Urban design
• Landscape architecture
• City planning

The company says it addresses global challenges using empirical analysis and by designing for social behavior, aiming to create "meaningful and lasting change." Its approach is described as both iterative and holistic, so that solutions stay adaptable and integrated rather than fixed from the start.

A recurring theme in its work is what it calls "massive small movements of change" — the idea that many small, people-scale interventions can add up to meaningful urban transformation. The firm frames its responsibility around creating inclusive neighborhoods and spaces that foster belonging and empower people to take purposeful climate action.

Service areas

Based on its featured projects, Gehl's work clusters into several service categories:

These categories often overlap within a single project. For example, a masterplan may combine urban design, community engagement, and social spatial research.

Who it works with

Gehl states that it serves both public and private clients, and describes itself as speaking "public and private." Its client base is grouped into four broad sectors:

• Public sector
• Philanthropy and non-profit
• Real estate
• Private sector

The company emphasizes long-term project relationships as a way of achieving tangible and lasting change, rather than one-off engagements.

Scale and track record

Gehl publishes a set of figures summarizing its practice:

• 25 years in business
• 2,600 projects across 251 cities
• 34 awards and recognitions
• 114 people across 25 nationalities

These numbers give a sense of the firm's reach, though they are self-reported and change over time. If you need current figures for a proposal or comparison, check the company's own site.

Examples of its work

The firm's featured projects illustrate the range of its practice:

• Bassin 7 — a public program to foster a more vibrant and connected waterfront
• Google — place activation and urban strategy work supporting the company's goal to be a "helpful neighbor"
• Play in American cities — promoting play to improve children's health and well-being
• Buenos Aires — integrating one of the city's most iconic informal settlements
• Favrholm — a master plan built on principles of shared living
• Santiago — a master plan for the city's first human-scale neighborhood
• Healthier food habits — shaping built environments to nudge everyday food choices
• A school for climate solutions — designing a school to accelerate global climate solutions
• Munich — future-proofing the city's public spaces
• Saudi cities — a people-first urban transformation

The mix shows that Gehl's work is not limited to a single building type or region. It moves between waterfronts, campuses, informal settlements, and citywide strategies.

When Gehl is a relevant choice

Gehl is worth considering if your project involves:

• Putting human experience and behavior at the center of an urban plan
• A strategy or masterplan rather than only a building design
• Public space, mobility, or place activation questions
• Community engagement as a core part of the process
• A client mix that includes public authorities, philanthropies, or private developers

It is likely a less direct fit if you need a conventional architecture firm for a single building, or a contractor for construction delivery. Gehl's own description centers on strategy, design, and research rather than construction.

Practical notes before reaching out

• Office locations: Copenhagen, New York, and San Francisco. Projects span many more cities, so geography alone does not rule out an engagement.
• Pricing: The site does not publish rates or fee structures. Expect to discuss scope and budget directly.
• Access: No login or gated portal is mentioned for general information; project descriptions and articles are publicly presented.
• Best first step: Review the featured projects closest to your own context, then contact the firm with a clear scope — the problem, the geography, and the decision you need to support.

For the most current details on services, people, and projects, the company's own website is the authoritative source.