Smart Cities...
start with human data
SAFE CITIES for everyone, by day AND by night!
OLIFANTENPAD CS
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PRIMED on the DDW 26
The City of Amsterdam and Olifantenpad CS invited everyone to experience how safe the city feels at the DDW 2026. You could get on a real bike, put on a VR headset and cycle through a virtual Amsterdam by night. PRIMED, our new design tool, measures what you feel in this experience: neurofeedback picks up when you relax, tense up or feel unsafe, and gaze tracking records where you look.
This makes visible what usually stays hidden: men and women, young and old, experience the same place very differently. With these insights, we work together on bike paths and public spaces that feel safe for everyone.
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Who we are
OLIFANTENPAD CS
A consortium of designers, psychologists, scientists, and technologists
Good urban design is never created at a single drawing board. At Olifantenpad CS, we share the conviction that professionals and public space users make better choices together than either group could alone.
Using Virtual Reality (VR), we can showcase a design before a single shovel hits the ground. Residents can experience what their neighborhood, street of parc might look like—and that is the moment their feedback can truly make a difference.
We bring together an urban psychologist, spatial designer, lighting designer, VR expert, and neurofeedback specialist to present a design that is more robust and enjoys broader support.
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Why?
Everyone experiences the city differently
Walk through a tunnel at night and a man might hardly notice it. A woman is already checking the dark corners. Yet streets, squares and bike paths are usually designed as if everyone feels the same.
Most of what we feel in a place happens unconsciously. A public meeting on a Wednesday evening doesn’t capture that, and it only reaches a small group of people. The result: places that look good on paper, but that people avoid once it gets dark. And in the Netherlands it is dark for an average of 11 hours a day.
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How?
How PRIMED works
PRIMED (Predictive Immersive Design Tool) places people in a realistic virtual environment. The results are turned into heatmaps that can be filtered by gender, age and cultural background. That shows at a glance which design or lighting scenario works, and for whom.
Because conditions in VR are the same for every participant, the results are easy to compare. And because you don’t need words or spatial expertise, anyone from 6 to 96 can take part. PRIMED works for new plans and for existing places alike.
At the end of October we have tested PRIMED in Amsterdam with about 100 people living in the area. Soon we will report here on what we discovered.
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More info?
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We develop
Designtools for the future city
It starts with people
Ultimately, it's about the human factor
Residents know their living environment better than anyone else. That knowledge is the starting point — not the drawing board. Professionals and residents are on equal footing in our process.
Ultimately, it is about taking care of each other, the city, and the environment together.
By involving people in the process, we simultaneously improve the social cohesion of the area. It will lead to places where people feel at home.
Develop it together in Virtual Reality
Virtual Reality and spatial design
With VR, residents can experience their own square, street, or neighborhood before a single brick is laid. They see what it will become, by day and evening, in various scenarios. They co-design using tools compiled by experts. Their choices are theirs—and they are justified by them.
Design with what people really feel
Neurofeedback
measures the brain’s unconscious responses to a spatial image — faster and more objectively than a textual questionnaire. Does someone feel safe or alert? Relaxed or stressed?
How do women and men react, what do older and younger people think? This data provides designers and policymakers with specific and fundamental insights that they cannot obtain from anywhere else.
Greater support. Lower risk. Better cities.
Effective participation pays off — literally. Research shows that a solid participation process prevents many objection procedures, reduces construction delays, and increases the final value of projects.
Our tool integrates a unique design element: the unconscious response of residents is converted into objective, measurable data on how groups of residents experience a design.
For Municipalities:
Better substantiated participation under the Environment and Planning Act.
Fewer surprises in later phases of the project and a design that enjoys greater support from the start, resulting in fewer objections and more confidence in the city administration.
For project developers:
Greater support. Lower risk. Better cities.
Lower risk of costly retrofits and higher end-user satisfaction.
For Designers:
In-depth insight into how users experience a spatial design day and night, the substantiation of that response, and a distinguishing argument in tenders.
We are an urban psychologist, a spatial designer, a lighting designer, a VR expert, and an expert in Neurofeedback.
Olifantenpad CS operates as an interdisciplinary team where design, behavioral science, and technology come together. This allows us to guide the entire process: from initial participation to a robust design. The method was developed and tested in collaboration with the Municipality of Eindhoven and presented to various municipalities, architectural firms, and user groups. We are now ready for the next step: real impact with real projects.
We enjoy working with municipalities and developers who view participation not as a formality, but as an opportunity to create better public spaces. Parties who recognize that user participation is an essential component in shaping public space. Not because the Environment and Planning Act requires it—but because they know that a city that works for everyone is a better city for everyone, and also yields greater social and commercial returns.
The city can be better, and we know how.
Get in touch and help us build the city of tomorrow.
