Methodology for Measuring Perceived Claustrophobia on New York City Streets

When we say 'crowded', we mean not just with people; we also mean with static objects, or street furniture, or, to get even more colloquial, 'clutter'.

When we mix 'crowdedness' within the narrow environment of NYC's sidewalks, we endeavor to call this feeling 'claustrophobia', a direct mapping to the definition in psychology.

While a neighborhood's atmosphere is, of course, a function of time, it is possible to get an average consensus of how 'crowded' each neighborhood feels by averaging over time.

New York City is a large place; almost 469 square miles of pretty dense civilization. Within the city, there are thousands of miles of sidewalks.

We plan to explore this metric further through an in-progress research paper; keep an eye out for that later this year!