Public space microplanning

The Silesian Branch of the Society of Polish Town Planners ran a map survey around the bus station and market square in Pszów as the first step of a microplanning project; 164 residents answered and 83 drew on the map. Full story with pictures: Pszów microplanning on mapsurvey.org.

The question

Pszów is a town of about 13,000 in the Rybnik coal district. Its bus station and market square are where people shop, board buses and pass through every day. The planners wanted to understand how the space is used now, where people wait, which paths they actually walk, which spots they avoid and what they value, before any design work and before the participatory workshops that would follow.

How the survey was built

Two students transferred the planners’ map and questions into Mapsurvey, ran the survey and analysed the data. The map showed three concentric zones: the station and square themselves, the streets about 50 metres out, and a 100-metre perimeter for connections and access, over a base map with the platforms, the square, the kiosks and the street grid.

The survey was in Polish and kept short on purpose: age group, gender and visit frequency, then six map tasks, each with the geometry that fitted:

1. Point: where do you usually wait? A checkbox sub-question on the pin asked what is missing at that spot.
2. Line: draw the shortcuts you actually walk.
3. Polygon: outline the area that needs the biggest change, with checkboxes for why (broken surface, no seating, and so on).
4. Polygon: outline the area you avoid.
5. Point: where would you plant one large shade tree?
6. Line: draw the stretch of pavement that is hardest to walk.

It closed with a rating of how safe the place feels, a checkbox list of what would improve safety, and a question about what must be kept.

The town hall announced the survey on its website on 7 August 2026.

What came back

About a hundred people answered on the first day, mostly on phones. By the end of the month there were 164 respondents, 83 of whom drew on the map, placing 556 marks; median completion time was about seven minutes.

The findings converged on one place. Of 52 residents who marked where they wait, 26 chose the same platform, by the narrow passage between the station kiosks; 27 marked that spot as the most run-down, and 22 of the “biggest change” outlines overlapped on it. Of 53 who described their waiting spot, 33 asked for a roofed shelter and 28 for seating. Two-thirds rated their sense of safety as average or worse; cameras and better lighting were the improvements most often chosen. 22 residents chose the same lawn on the station’s west side for the shade tree. The platforms and the square itself were what people said must be kept, inside the zone marked for change.

The data went into participatory design workshops with residents and planners scheduled for September to November 2026.

What it teaches

• Each geometry where it fits. Pins for places, lines for routes walked, polygons for perceived extents; every task was concrete, and 83 of 164 respondents did some map work on a six-task survey (Designing a map survey, rule 1).
• Ask what people already do. “Where do you usually wait?” and “draw the shortcut you actually walk” ask about behaviour, not opinion, and produced the strongest agreement (rule 3).
• Collect what to keep. The question about what must be kept found valued elements inside the area everyone wanted changed (rule 4).
• Planner assumptions as options. Amenities were offered as checkboxes, so the data could say “shelter and seating” rather than the brief (rule 6).
• Sub-questions on the pin. “What is missing here?” on the waiting-spot pin turned 52 dots into a specification (Add sub-questions).
• Quantitative first, qualitative second. A seven-minute map survey gave the workshops something to argue about; it did not replace them.