Creating CommUNITY: Calculating Chance Encounters using Tech

Placemaking is on the rise and has the potential to boost local economies, increase neighbourhood safety and accessibility, help reduce loneliness and social isolation, and create trust while bridging the gap between citizens and city builders.

Canada’s housing crisis has emphasized the urgent need to densify many of our urban areas and increase the number of housing units built, but how do we ensure that we are also creating vibrant, inclusive, and complete communities in the process? 

What is a Community?

A community can generally be defined as a group of people who share common characteristics or interests. These groups all have something in common, whether it’s their values, goals, interests, their sense of self or identity, which unites them together. Members feel a part of these communities, and their belonging in these communities defines aspects of who they are as individuals (think, academic community, religious community, scientific community, etc).  

There is also another type of community that often gets mixed in with the others: a geographic community. This is the type of community that city builders are directly involved in, forming its shape, layout, and function through policies, plans, and reports. The primary shared characteristic between members of this type of community is the geographic boundary within which they live, but this does not guarantee that they will have any other values or goals in common or possess a common identity. Physically they are a part of the community, but socially they may feel isolated from each other. Lacking a sense of community may inhibit residents’ sense of belonging and creation of social ties, which are crucial in the natural development of a lively and engaged community.

City builders create geographic communities.

The increased pace of life of the 21st century and reliance on technology has stifled many opportunities for citizens to organically engage with their surroundings and neighbours as generations had done before. Pedestrians are walking up to 15% faster and spending half the time lingering in public spaces as they did 30 years ago, according to a recent MIT study. Social isolation and loneliness are widespread in communities worldwide, which were further emphasized by the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic (WHO, 2025). These factors are affecting the ways that citizens experience their communities, their physical and mental health, and the quality and longevity of life.

Social isolation and loneliness are widespread.

Building housing in a geographic location and calling it a community is one thing, but building housing and creating opportunities for meaningful social connections is what lays the foundation for truly vibrant and thriving communities. Social connections between residents often create a sense of shared values and responsibilities, and help to create unique identities for these neighbourhoods that make them stand out as exceptional places to live, work, and play in.

Public Space Revitalization Through Placemaking

Neighbourhoods new and old can benefit from placemaking principles to revitalize their shared community spaces and encourage social connections. This community-based approach capitalizes on local assets, inspiration, and potential, and results in the creation of quality public spaces that positively contribute to people’s health, happiness, and wellbeing. Community engagement is at the centre of this movement, focusing on urban design and public realm improvements, and implementing both short- and long-term revitalization strategies. 

Neighbourhoods can encourage social connections.

Creating great public spaces is both a science and an art, but they all share the following four qualities according to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS); they are easily accessible by a various transportation modes, contain a diverse range of uses and activities, are sociable and natural gathering places, and are comfortable and well presented. To determine how successful a public space is, these attributes can be further evaluated based on their tangible and intangible measurements, which are broken down in The Place Diagram created by the PPS. 

Enhancing Communities through Technology

So how can city builders leverage technology to create vibrant and thriving public spaces and communities with unique identities and strong social connections?

City builders can leverage technology to create vibrant public spaces.

Design and Infrastructure
By analyzing data related to foot traffic, user behaviour, environmental conditions, and other factors, city builders can make better informed design decisions when it comes to planning or revitalizing public spaces within neighbourhoods. Learning how the community utilizes these spaces, what demographic groups visit them, when these spaces are active vs inactive, can help planners determine what smart infrastructure improvements can be integrated to make them more functional, accessible, inclusive, and safer for all members of the community.

Leveraging spatial analysis tools such as ArcGIS allows planners to visualize and map out these data patterns and identify gaps and opportunities in the physical fabric faster and more efficiently, as the City of Surrey has done in their 15-Minute Neighbourhood Vision.

Public Participation, Engagement, and Education
Digital placemaking presents opportunities to educate residents and visitors about a community’s history or identity. Tools such as augmented reality can enhance the way that citizens interact with public art, cultural heritage, or proposed developments and community improvement projects, amplifying and enriching the way that physical spaces are experienced. 

ArcGIS Urban and City Engine are powerful technologies that present development scenarios and demonstrate community growth through visualization and realistic models, bridging the gap between planners and the public, and developing trust.

Community Bonds
Technology can further support communities through other location-based initiatives such as neighbourhood apps, which allow citizens to submit community maintenance requests through photo and location entries, like Calgary’s East Village Safe & Clean app. These types of initiatives help foster community pride and shared responsibility, allowing citizens to directly shape and maintain the identity of their neighbourhoods.

Cross-border community bonds can also be formed through digital placemaking projects, such as the PORTAL, a public art installation which provides a direct, live-time video feed between cities around the world and promotes cross-cultural connections. These types of initiatives not only help to establish a sense of place, act as an interactive art installation, and encourage tourism, but also help to unify different groups across the globe despite their geographic borders.

Smart Site Identification
Finally, city builders can leverage technology for smarter site selection, allowing them to identify key locations for housing, businesses, or work opportunities that are well-connected to public and active transportation and are within a range of desired uses and amenities. 

Tools like Ratio.City empower planners and developers to identify these opportunities in a matter of minutes and make it easier to create well-connected communities that naturally encourage socialization and gathering.

Placemaking has the potential to boost local economies

Placemaking is on the rise and has the potential to boost local economies, increase neighbourhood safety and accessibility, help reduce loneliness and social isolation, and create trust while bridging the gap between citizens and city builders. Leveraging technology and data visualization when building new or adding to existing communities can help identify community needs that may otherwise be missed and create opportunities for chance encounters that will lay a strong foundation for thriving communities of the future.