A camera on a rooftop, a year of footage and a simple question: who actually uses the public space we pay for?
For twelve months a camera on the roof of the central library has taken one photograph of Corn Exchange Square every ten minutes. Nobody is recognisable from that height. What the pictures show is how many people are there, where they stand and how long they stay.
The city paid 3.1 million for the square's new paving. It wanted to know who it had bought it for.
What the count found
A team at the planning office went through 52,000 frames. Their summary runs to four lines:
- The square is busiest at 12:40 on weekdays, not at weekends
- Two thirds of people cross it in under a minute and never stop
- Those who stay gather on the north edge, where the low wall is
- The centre, where the fountain was removed, is empty nine hours in ten
The benches along the south side, chosen by the designers, are used less than the wall, which was left over from the old layout.
The argument
A cafe owner on the east side wants to put forty tables in the empty middle and has applied for a licence. A residents' group wants the fountain back.
"A square is the one room in a city that nobody has to pay to sit in," the group's chair said. "Count that before you rent it out."
The planning office says both sides are now quoting the same photographs, which it counts as progress.
What happens now
The licence hearing is in November. Before then the office will try the cheapest idea in its report: moving six benches to the north edge for a month and counting again.
The camera stays on the roof until spring.
