The Aalborg Survey / Part 2 - GPS Based Survey: Diverse Urban Spaces (DUS)

Background and purpose
The Aalborg Survey consists of four independent parts: a web, GPS and an interview based survey and a literature study, which together form a consistent investigation and research into use of urban space, and specifically into young people’s use of urban space: what young people do in urban spaces, where they are in the urban spaces and when the young people are in the urban spaces.
The answers to these questions form the framework and enable further academic discussions and conclusions in relation to the overall research project Diverse Urban Spaces (DUS). The primary aim of the DUS research project is to investigate why young people do what they do in the urban spaces, and how this knowledge can contribute to an increase in young people’s use of urban spaces.
It is the overall aim of the DUS research project to facilitate an increased and more diverse use of urban spaces, and consequently young people are used as target group, as they represent the future users of urban spaces. Moreover, it is easy to get in touch with young people through educational institutions and schools, which makes it possible to carry out the investigations in a fairly simple way, economically and logistically, and further enables eventual reproduction of similar empirical data.
The DUS research project is related to the general research focus found within the Urban Design section at Institute of Architecture, Design and Media Technology (AD:MT), Aalborg University (AAU) and the research focus within the cluster of Mobility and Tracking Technologies (MoTT), AAU.

Summary / Part 2 - GPS Based Survey
The 2nd part of the DUS research project has been carried out during the months May-September 2008 and May 2009 as a quantitative GPS based activity survey of approximately 400, later reduced to 169, young people from the same sample population as in Part 1 – Web Based Survey, i.e. 7.680 young people studying at upper secondary schools in Aalborg [statistikbanken.dk, b]. The respondents have been chosen among those who participated in the Web Based Survey of Part 1. Furthermore, the GPS based data are supplemented with an attractivity analysis among the 169 respondents.
The resulting data are presented in maps in three scales that illustrate the respondents’ use of Aalborg’s urban spaces with regards to the respondent’s movements in time and space. By further coupling the GPS data with data on the single respondent’s gender, age, address, activities, mode of transport, use of money etc. it is possible to gain a more detailed knowledge of young people’s use of urban spaces in Aalborg.