Mapping the night
This tool helps stakeholders mapping and visualizing the different activities that happen during the night-time in a city or district.
Format A3
1 hour
City or distric scale
Why to use this tool?
The night-time period gathers activities of entertainment, work shifts, maintenance of urban infrastructure, supply chain, among others. And these activities change between cities and districts.
Because of this, stakeholders need to identify how the urban night evolves in time to design urban interventions and policies around those dynamics.
HOW to use THIS TOOL?
Step 1
Download this PDF and print it on an A3. You can also take the image as a canvas and use an online collaborative whiteboard such as miro.
Find more about miro here
Step 2
Make everyone comfortable sharing their ideas before to start. An ice-breaker is always a good idea to integrate all the team (10 min)
Step 3
Agree between the stakeholders when starts and finishes the night-time period in your city. Most studies agree in the period between 18:00 and 6:00 (10 min)
Step 4
Discuss each one of the activities written in the canvas rings. At what time each activity begins? At what time does it end? The schedule is the same all the days of the week? Mark the time slot for each activity (30 min)
Step 5
Inquire if some activity is missing. If this is the case, add it in the canvas and describe it as detailed as possible (10 min)
*Tip
Involve a diverse group of stakeholders. Make sure that this team gathers citizens, designers, decision-makers and any other profile relevant for the project. All points of view are welcome.
Where to find more information about this topic?
The night-time mapping related to identifying activities, schedules and users of a city or district is a topic that many lighting designers and lighting design companies have been studying since the last decades.
From that, Night-time Traveller based the development of this tool on the study “Cities Alive: Rethinking the Shades of the Night” published by ARUP, and the concept of Chronotropy promoted by Roger Narboni.