Daylight City Walk

DLA Annual Conference 2026
Parallel Session B

Thursday, 28 May 2026
from 15:30 – 17:00

Leads
Dr Carlo Volf, New Interventions in Depression (NID) Group, Denmark
Prof. Em. Stephan Mäder, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland

Description
During this session, participants will be divided into three groups and will have the opportunity to go outside and explore the city of Copenhagen in different tours:

  • Route A – Medieval City planning
  • Route B – 20thCentury Urban planning
  • Route C – 21thCentury Urban planning

The tours will take place simultaneously; each group can consist of up to 10 people and will be accompanied by a guide. The guide will measure light exposure using wearable light sensors and the data will be analysed. The tours will be conducted on foot and will last 30 minutes. Following the tour, participants will be asked to provide feedback on their experiences along the route using a semantic 8-item questionnaire.

Meeting point is at 15:15 in front of the conference venue ‘Centre for Health and Society (CSS)’ (see here). The final destination for all routes is the conference hotel ‘Copenhagen Strand Hotel’ (Google Maps). Transportation to the conference dinner venue will be arranged.

Objectives

  • Measure the light exposure for each route, located in different parts of Copenhagen using a wearable tracking device.
  • Measure the different light levels in exactly the same photo period 15.30 – 16.00 under exactly the same daylight conditions
  • Measure how different urban planning affect us, when it comes to measurable daylight levels, and last but not least when it comes to experienced daylight levels and the overall quality of the urban surroundings.
  • A paper is planned to be published, following up on an earlier project “Daylight and Green Cities” (see article here).
  • Describing the results of the field studies and documenting how different urban planning affect daylight and support outdoor activities under similar daylight conditions
  • “Daylight City Walks” this year is studying urban planning at 56th N latitude. The plan is to include other cities in the following years, making daylight city walks a repetitive activity in the future, studying how latitudes and urban planning relate to each other.