Who really keeps a small town’s streets alive?

Urban vitality in small city centers is complex, shaped by intuition, routines, relationships, and trust, even though it is often seen merely as a matter of data and access.

Rheinfelden collects detailed pedestrian flow data through the data service platform Hystreet, yet this data rarely reaches the shop owners who could act on it. Existing structures for exchange already exist, but participation remains low. This suggests that the gap is not one of information or opportunity, but of the relational conditions that make collective action possible in the first place.

As a response, I developed ShopInsights, a digital companion integrated into the Hystreet platform that brings simple, daily insights to shop owners, offers a space for exchange, and supports extending their intuition rather than replacing it. It lays the groundwork for trust and exchange to grow over time.

My project encourages us to reconsider urban vitality not solely as a matter of data, but as one rooted in trust, relationships, and the conditions that enable a community to collaborate.