The global climate-change crisis, public health, social and economic challenges in cities around the world have underscored the need for analytic tools and models to examine the relationship between city design, walking as a mode of transport, and face to face social interactions. The City Form Lab presents two related projects--NYC Walks and Sidewalk Ballet-- as part of the MIT Department of Architecture led exhibition The Next Earth: Computation, Crisis, Cosmology at the Palazzo Diedo, the exhibition space of Berggruen Arts & Culture, at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.
The NYC Walks project models foot-traffic volumes across all sidewalks, crosswalks, and footpaths in NYC. This helps New York City agencies and communities understand which sidewalks and crossings are most critical for day-to-day operations of the city, and guide pedestrian infrastructure investments to places where they impact most constituents. The model also helps the city predict how new developments impact walking activity, desirably increasing pedestrian mode share project-by-project over time.
Walking is not only important as a mode of transportation. The related Sidewalk Ballet project explores social interactions on city sidewalks using advanced computer vision and large language models to detect and map group activities like talking, eating, and walking together. Mapping social interactions on all sidewalks city-wide opens up fascinating urban sociological questions: why do some streets and public spaces attract more social interactions than others? How does the spatial context around a street affects the social interactions that take place there? What role does the design quality of the street itself play, and how do the demographic profiles of people who live, work or visit the area influence the likelihoods of social encounters and interactions on a street?
Visit us at the Palazzo Diedo, the exhibition space of Berggruen Arts & Culture, between May 10th and November 23rd, 2025.