Know Your Neighbourhood

People watching is defined as the action or practice of spending time idly observing people in a public place. The “Know Your Neighbourhood” is a project based on the data collected when people watching.

The Know Your Neighbourhood Project is based on data collected on the Arbutus Greenway. The Greenway’s history spans over 100 years – from its beginnings as a railway for passengers and local industry, to contentious negotiations between the City of Vancouver and CP rail for its purchase. Today, it is an active transportation pathway that runs from Granville Island to Vancouver’s southern edge, overlooking the Fraser River. In the future, it will become a multimodal corridor linking a series of destination parks and public spaces, and in the meantime, the local community has found creative ways to bring people together along its path.

Looking at seemingly arbitrary variables collected and observed from Greenway users, locals can gain insight into who they share their space with. We often don’t think much about the passerby’s and community that we come across. The project seeks to draw connections and find patterns of similarities and differences between groups that may be seemingly completely detached. Creating these graphs using hand-drawn elements, the idea of human-made was key in creating the graph’s visual look and feel. By analyzing the graphs or simply admiring them as you pass, you can feel more connected to your community and those within it.

On a sunny spring day, I sat on the Arbutus Greenway for an hour with my Excel spreadsheet and tallied the variables of each passerby.

I was inspired by the way data visualizations can look like beautiful illustrations but with the pairing of a legend, can hold and unlock a whole story.

After collecting the data I began creating shapes, colours, lines, and dots that could act as indicators for each of the chosen variables I collected. I created a legend that could be placed on placards below the billboard sized data installation for people to grab and decode with. Some of those variables being things such as Number of People Moving as a Group (1-4+) or State of Communication (Listening, Talking, Laughing/Yelling, Silent).

Data Collection Day

Legend 1

Legend 2

Acting as a little takeaway pamphlet at the site of the project, these cards are to give a bit more of an in-depth explanation of the project and its goals.

Project Website Mockup