Scope

Spatial Design Hub was commissioned to assess pedestrian movement across a newly planned Bahrain Stadium Masterplan. The study focused on understanding how people would navigate the masterplan—particularly between public transport stops, arenas, hotels, car parks, and recreational areas.

A key objective was to provide the design team with data-driven pedestrian demand insights to inform decisions at the early masterplanning stage. The analysis included scenario-based assessments, mapping how pedestrian flows changed throughout the day, including peak arrival and departure periods for both major and minor events. Movement was tracked in 15-minute intervals to reflect realistic usage patterns and ensure connectivity responded to varying user needs.

Key Outcomes

• Modelled pedestrian demand across a range of scenarios, including event and non-event conditions.

• Identified high-traffic routes and key desire lines to support the placement of infrastructure, facilities, and public realm features.

• Optimised path and footway widths based on projected pedestrian volumes, ensuring efficient and accessible movement.

• Informed revisions to the masterplan layout, with follow-up analysis demonstrating improved connectivity and user flow.

• Provided strategic pedestrian demand data that fed into micro-simulation studies for high-activity areas, ensuring detailed design responses to human behaviour.

Project Highlights & Summary

This pedestrian movement study for the Bahrain Stadium Masterplan demonstrated how spatial analysis can directly shape the design of large-scale urban environments. Using GIS-based modelling, Spatial Design Hub evaluated how people would move between key destinations, adjusting for time of day, event activity, and different user types.

Our findings were instrumental in guiding the design team’s decisions on path widths, crossing points, and the arrangement of public transport connections. The insights ensured the masterplan catered not only to everyday pedestrian activity but also to peak flows during large-scale events.

Crucially, our analysis enabled planners to replace assumptions with evidence, helping to create a masterplan that is intuitive, walkable, and built around real patterns of use. The result is a human-centric design underpinned by clear, actionable data.