Boston Foot Traffic

Year: 2026
Role: Policy-in-Action Project Analyst
Status: completed

Heat map of Boston with foot-traffic intensity from blue to red, the densest red band running through Downtown and Back Bay, with smaller hot spots in Allston, Dorchester, and East Boston. — The heat map: 10,607 places and 667 million visits over seven months, one of five data layers across 25 neighborhoods.

Where should a food truck park? The City of Boston’s Office of Small Business fields that question constantly, and until this year the answer came from memory. Boston Foot Traffic replaced the guess with evidence: a public website that turns anonymized foot-traffic data into heat maps and siting recommendations a small-business owner can actually read.

From December 2025 to May 2026 I worked on it as a Policy-in-Action Project Analyst, in partnership with the Boston Main Streets Foundation and the City of Boston Office of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion. I led the analyst team: scoped the engagement with the City, ran the client meetings, and worked out why the mobile vending program was failing its smallest vendors, a fixed-site model that ties income to site assignment instead of demand, permitting fragmented across agencies, and limited access to public space. I also owned the entire build, from information architecture and brand through interactive maps, data visualization, and deployment on Cloudflare, and wrote all the site copy so the research reads as a story and not a dataset.

The project received the MPA program’s Policy in Action Project Award at Watson’s 2026 student awards, and the Director of the Office of Small Business confirmed in a formal letter of appreciation that the team’s heat maps now inform the City’s data-driven vendor-siting decisions. A pilot site our research identified is slated for the City’s FY27 push cart pilot program.

Emmanuel Colmenares and Nicole Nehiley holding MPA Awards 2026 certificates under a tent at the Watson School, with Professor Nicole Pangborn beside them. — Being presented the Policy in Action Project Award, with teammate Nicole Nehiley and Professor Nicole Pangborn, at the Watson School, May 2026. Watson student awards 2026

The site is live at bostonfoottraffic.com.